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GEO BON launches work on “early products”
The Task on the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network continues to make good progress with implementation. In particular, the four early products referenced in the Task sheet and described in the GEO BON implementation plan overview should demonstrate the viability of the GEO BON concept over the coming year.
One early product will be based on the proof-of-concept provided by a recent assessment of African protected areas. This assessment of 741 protected areas compiles a huge amount of information drawn from the most up-to-date databases and is available online. It also allows users to analyse the value of, and threats to, biodiversity in each park, and compares sites by country and by ecoregion. Every 10 days an alert is issued about any unusual patterns in rainfall, fires, vegetation and seasonal water bodies in each protected area. These alerts are made available as GeoRSS (Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS) feeds to which users can subscribe.
Two GEO Participating Organizations, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), are collaborating on this project, which is supported by a Swiss financial contribution to GEO BON. The project team is developing an internet application for visualizing information from protected areas that is combined with specimen and occurrence data from GBIF and from the World Database on Protected Areas. The application will be expanded to include taxonomic and geospatial data as well as literature references. This work will be coordinated with the African Protected Areas group at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC).
GEO BON is also advancing through other new projects and activities. The European EBONE project (EU-FP7 grant 212322), for example, has been established as a GEO BON pilot. During 2009 EBONE will produce an overview of monitoring initiatives in Europe, keys for field identification of Annex 1 habitats (habitats protected though the EU Species and Habitats Directive), field sampling strategies, protocols for wider countryside monitoring, and a first effort to quantify the relationship between field habitat data and Earth observation data through intercalibration. All progress and products of the EBONE project are being reported at the EBONE web site.
Together, these GEO BON early products, pilot projects and other activities aim to coordinate and harmonize the diverse biodiversity observation systems being managed today by government agencies, research institutions and NGOs to ensure the improved sharing, integration and dissemination of biodiversity data and information. |
