An inventory of biodiversity data sources for conservation monitoring.

With over 2 billion observations of species from across the earth, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has become an influential repository of information for not only ecologists, but also conservation scientists and policy makers. Yet biodiversity data reveal more than species distributions. They reflect colonial histories, economic inequities, and cultural differences. This article argues for moving beyond ideas of “spatial bias” in conservation science to highlight the colonial legacies and contemporary social forces that shape biodiversity data. Drawing on interviews with the GBIF staff and data publishers as well as critical mapping of GBIF data patterns, we visualize and analyze how and why colonial patterns persist and shift in this global biodiversity data. To explain diverse trajectories of postcolonial production of data, we identify three social forces–colonial legacies of collecting, infrastructures of international development, and contemporary data cultures–that structure biodiversity observation distributions and data ownership and availability. Together, these findings demonstrate how, even in the age of open access, colonial and postcolonial practices and politics continue to shape what we know about the natural world.

Promoting equity in the use of algorithms for high-seas conservation

Recent advances in digital technology, coupled with rapidly increasing interest in the creation and dissemination of digitized specimen data for use in broad-scale research by botanists and other organismal scientists, have encouraged the development of a variety of new research opportunities in the botanical sciences (e.g., Page et al., 2015; Soltis, 2017). It is now increasingly possible to collect, use, re-use, and share data more easily and effectively. With the advent of the U.S. National Science Foundation's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections initiative and the establishment of iDigBio (Integrated Digitized Biocollections; www.idigbio.org) as the national resource for specimen digitization and digital data mobilization, researchers now have access to ever larger and varied digital data sets for visualization, analysis, and modeling and have new opportunities for adopting "big data" strategies for facilitating discovery. The iDigBio portal alone now includes nearly 20 million botanical specimen records, a figure that is growing rapidly as new institutions share their data. In this special issue of Applications in Plant Sciences, which is based on symposium presentations at Botany 2017 (the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America and affiliated societies) and the XIX International Botanical Congress, authors present a broad array of examples of the latest developments in botanical biodiversity research using digitized specimen data, including in the fields of genomics, conservation assessment, ecology, phenology, and taxonomic revisions. The papers present current trends in the proactive digitization of specimen data that occurs during the collecting and vouchering of specimens and field data; the tools, skills, and strategies needed for linking and visualizing botanical data; and innovative methods for digital discovery. This collection also highlights how digital data are being used in research that expands our understanding and conservation of plant diversity and the environment. Although the source data for the papers in this collection are herbarium specimens, the topics extend well beyond systematics. Broadly integrative plant biologists will be interested in new approaches to using and re-using specimen data—whether locality information for modeling or images for analysis of morphology and/or functional traits. More importantly, digitized herbarium data become even more valuable when linked to other data sources, such as environmental or genetic data. In fact, emerging cyberinfrastructure and new data sources provide unparalleled opportunities for mobilizing and integrating massive amounts of information from organismal biology, ecology, genetics, climatology, and other disciplines. Particularly powerful is the integration of phylogenies with specimen data, enabling analyses of phylogenetic diversity in a spatio-temporal context, the evolution of niche space, and more. Such data-driven synthetic analyses may generate unexpected patterns, yielding new hypotheses for further study. However, a major challenge is the heterogeneous nature of complex data, and new methods are needed to link these divergent data types. Ongoing efforts to link and analyze diverse data are yielding new perspectives on a range of ecological problems. Integration of plant phylogeny, distributions, traits, and ultimately genetics is permitting new perspectives on landscape-level patterns of biodiversity, with implications for conservation and management of natural resources. Although many specific hypotheses may be addressed through integrated analyses of biodiversity and environmental data, perhaps the greatest value of such data-enabled science will lie in the unanticipated patterns that emerge. The papers in this collection capture some of the diversity of the emerging themes that can be addressed via use of digitized herbarium specimens. The authors address the broad range of research that can be facilitated by analysis of digitized herbarium specimens; limitations and bias of digitized specimens for certain avenues of research; future digitization and training needs; the role of globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) in integrative research involving herbarium specimens and other sources of data; digitization workflows that incorporate field, museum, and data mobilization components; the use of deep learning in specimen identification from images; the development of a standardized workflow for scoring plant phenology from herbarium specimens; the use of aggregated digitized data for fungi in generating a comprehensive mycological flora (or mycoflora) for North America; the role of digital images in education and public outreach; the effective contributions of citizen scientists of all ages to hypothesis-driven research; and the need for effective, comprehensive, and accurate tracking of data use for understanding the impact of digitized collections. Noting the centuries of exploration that have yielded the global span of the world's herbaria, James et al. (2018) provide an overview of how open, digitized, aggregated botanical data can be used to document global change, predict future impacts, and drive biological and environmental remediation. Herbarium data—from the information in labels to data that can be extracted from images—have an increasing role to play in analyses of temporal and spatial change in community composition and structure. Moreover, patterns identified via analyses of herbarium specimens can form the foundation for conservation, rehabilitation, and restoration efforts of not only single species but entire communities. However, collections data—whether plants, animals, or fungi—may not always be research-ready. James et al. address the fitness for use of herbarium data in basic and applied research, noting that taxonomic, spatial, and temporal limitations may hamper the usefulness of herbarium data for specific questions. Fortunately, research efforts addressing issues of data quality, uncertainty, and bias are providing guidance for assessing limitations for specific uses and for ameliorating the effects. Given the enormous potential of herbarium data for research in systematics, ecology, conservation, and global change, the authors cite the need for greater global advocacy for collections, from curation of physical specimens to digitization to online publishing of digitized data. Future work to enhance digital herbarium collections through digitization of other resources, such as field notes, libraries, etc., and to develop tools for discovery, visualization, analysis, and communication is needed. Key to innovative and effective use of digitized herbarium data will be skills training for the next generation of botanical researchers. The assignment of GUIDs to facilitate the tracking, linking, and discovery of biodiversity specimens across the internet has been a hotly debated subject. Although the majority of biodiversity informaticians agree that the use of unique identifiers is essential, controversy remains about which types of identifiers are best, the most appropriate Darwin Core field in which they should be published, strategies for resolving identifiers to physical specimens across the internet, and effective implementation strategies for the wide variation in biodiversity collections storage, management, and digitization. Nelson et al. (2018) narrow the scope of this debate to the implementation of GUID assignments to the digitization and mobilization of herbarium specimen data. They review the types of GUIDs in current use and strongly recommend that GUID values be associated with all specimens and included in all digital records of those specimens. They address the lack of a universal, community-supported resolver for GUID values and offer guidelines and recommended practices for minting, managing, and sharing GUIDs for herbarium specimens. Contreras (2018) brings a paleobotanical perspective to this special edition, highlighting the important role researchers can play in incorporating collection, digitization, analysis, curation, and data mobilization into an integrated research and digitization pipeline. Although she emphasizes that the workflow and pipeline presented may be especially useful in smaller institutions with limited staff or when images and other digital data are integral to the research project, the protocols she outlines may have broad applicability to researchers and other staff working in larger collections, as well as to those in non-paleontological collections, including herbaria. Her workflow incorporates three components—field, museum, and data mobilization—that are often temporally and spatially separated in current practice. As a result, the paper brings a clear museum perspective to the research process, with the museum phase serving as a transition during which specimens are organized, data are bridged from field to museum, and the preparation of a museum workspace designed to facilitate these steps. Contreras' paper offers an important viewpoint on the ways in which research, collections management, digitization, and curation can be linked to support the management of specimens in the museum. Given the rapid increase in the availability of high-quality specimen and field images of plants, the capacity to utilize computer vision and image mining techniques to make automated taxonomic identifications, extract traits, and produce phenological scorings provides the field of convolutional neural networks and deep learning tremendous opportunities for applications in botany. Botella et al. (2018) review previous work with these tools, pointing out that recent progress with deep learning techniques has shown impressive recognition performance and that, when combined with mobile applications such as Pl@ntNet (https://identify.plantnet-project.org/), these techniques may contribute significantly to species distribution modeling (SDM), biodiversity monitoring, and the inclusion of citizen science observations within each of these domains. Their paper explores the use of automated identification in the absence of human validation for SDM, particularly the impact of the degree of uncertainty when training the MAXENT niche modeling approach. They evaluated five invasive species against a training set of 332,000 human-validated plant images belonging to about 11,000 species. Their results suggest significant research challenges for using these types of data in SDMs, as well as for developing models for integrating citizen science observations into conservation management. Automated image mining is of continuing importance to botany and is a worthwhile avenue for further research. Plant phenology (seasonal events such as leaf out, flowering, and fruiting) has complex effects on multiple levels of biological organization from individuals to ecosystems, and Yost et al. (2018) discuss the potential of herbarium specimens for addressing basic and applied research on plant phenology. Phenological shifts are key indicators of global change, and temporal mismatches in phenology may have important, even catastrophic effects on natural communities and agricultural systems. For example, such mismatches between plants and pollinators can quickly cause local extinctions, drive rapid evolutionary shifts, and cause billions of dollars of agricultural losses. Herbarium specimens are an excellent source of data for documenting changes in plant phenology (see review by Willis et al., 2017), but despite millions of specimens that could contribute to an understanding of historical phenology, inter-year variation in phenology, and true shifts in phenology, the use of these data suffers from a lack of standardized scoring methods and definitions of phenological states. To date, phenological information has been captured in a herbarium specimen record in multiple ways, for example, in Darwin Core fields from 'reproductiveCondition' to 'occurrenceRemarks,' 'organismRemarks,' 'dynamicProperties,' or 'fieldNotes.' The lack of standardization in scoring and recording phenological data has limited large-scale use of specimens for phenological study. Yost et al. propose a standardized methodology for scoring phenological characters from herbarium specimens that can be applied by researchers across herbaria, research groups, and means of data collection, including via citizen science, satellite imagery, and stationary cameras. Herbaria for centuries have typically housed collections of not only plants, but also fungi. Despite current knowledge that fungi represent the sister group to animals and are not closely related to plants, many of the curatorial practices for fungi are similar to those for plants, and this similarity extends to digitization as well. Thiers and Halling (2018) describe the Macrofungi Collections Consortium (MaCC) and the development of MyCoPortal (http://mycoportal.org/portal/index.php) for serving digitized specimen information. MaCC digitized data from ~1.25 million specimens; including data contributed by the Microfungi Collections Consortium (http://www.microfungi.org/), the MyCoPortal database currently houses nearly 3.5 million specimens, as well as descriptions, illustrations, and observational records. The driving force behind development of MyCoPortal was production of a database to provide baseline data on the extent and distribution of macrofungal diversity, and the aggregated data have certainly accomplished this goal. Moreover, MyCoPortal has attracted the amateur mycological community from the United States, which comprises 80 clubs and 10,200 members. Together, professional and amateur mycologists, with the foundational data from MyCoPortal, are poised to produce a comprehensive mycoflora of North America, complete with DNA sequences, phenotypic descriptions, and images. Data from MyCoPortal have been used in taxonomic treatments, large-scale phylogenetic analyses, ecological studies, and analyses of native versus invasive species and set the stage for a broad range of uses into the future. Herbaria are reservoirs of both well-documented specimens and undescribed diversity. New species are described each year from specimens that have been housed in collections for decades, if not centuries. However, the pace of such discovery is slow, especially for non-angiosperms, and accelerating the process of discovery is expensive. von Konrat et al. (2018) explore the role of digitization in increasing accessibility to specimens, particularly in combination with citizen science efforts and online technology for uses beyond label transcription. The authors connect natural history collections to education and outreach through a citizen science tool based on the online Zooniverse platform. Their project, MicroPlants (http://microplants.fieldmuseum.org/), uses images of the liverwort genus Frullania and both a web-based platform and an interactive touchscreen version to capture large data sets for taxonomic analysis, engage a diverse participant group in research, and expose the public to novel analytical approaches and the scientific process. MicroPlants has been used in informal science settings at the Field Museum and in formal educational venues in middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities. The project has provided valuable data on both morphological variation in Frullania and the educational effectiveness of this citizen science platform. Noteworthy is the fact that preliminary analyses indicate that data provided by non-experts were comparable to those generated by experts, supporting a role for citizen scientists in addressing authentic hypothesis-driven research. Data aggregators and publishers benefit significantly from knowing how their collections data are being used and attributed, the number of records and data sets being downloaded, the types of individuals who are finding these data useful, and the impact of projects for which the data are used. Usage metrics, in particular, help herbaria document value to institutional administrators as well as potential funders, and assist herbarium directors seek out and target underserved or expanding audiences. Cantrill (2018) summarizes tracked usage of nearly 900,000 records from the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, served through the Australasian Virtual Herbarium, and details trends in data usage since 2009. Queries were tracked in three broad categories, including general use, non-research use, and scientific research use, with histories of how these categories and their subcategories have become more refined over the past decade. Cantrill points out that even with more highly resolved classifications, about one third of all queries still remain unclassified. He further notes that although the data give a glimpse of data use as reported by users, they do not provide a metric for understanding the impact of the projects for which they were downloaded. Future research must assess this issue if we are to understand and report the full impact of our collections. This collection of papers provides a current snapshot of some of the issues surrounding the aggregation and use of digitized herbarium data and of some of the many possible uses of these data in research and education. However, the field is changing rapidly, with new tools for data mining, image analysis, and data tracking coming available at a rapid pace. The application of innovative analytic, algorithmic, and informatics approaches to centuries-old specimens is revolutionizing the role of herbaria and other museum collections in modern biology. Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) is funded by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program (Co-operative Agreements EF-1115210 and DBI-1547229). The authors thank the contributors to this special issue of Applications in Plant Sciences for their contributions to two symposia on Green Digitization (at Botany 2017 and the XIX International Botanical Congress), and we thank the Botanical Society of America and the International Botanical Congress Organizing Committee for supporting these symposia.

The Amazon rainforest has an iconic position in the global conservation movement: not only is it the largest continuous tropical rainforest in the world, but it also encapsulates many of the greatest challenges facing twentieth century conservation. However, while deforestation and its potential impact on global climate systems (Malhi et al. 2008) grab most of the headlines, it is easy to forget that Amazonia is also home to a large and diverse human population (Ribeiro and Fabre 2003). In addition to the remaining indigenous tribes, there are many settlements and scattered communities of fishermen and farmers of mixed ethnic origins. The support and active engagement of these communities in conservation and sustainable resource management is essential for the success of any conservation or sustainable development initiative. Unfortunately, numerous studies have demonstrated that implementation of co-management or community-based management of natural resources is far more difficult to achieve than the abundant rhetoric that promotes it. Moreover, each failed initiative makes it harder to establish the levels of trust and cooperation that are essential ingredients of successful management systems. Even without the handicap of previous failed initiatives, successful community-led management of natural resources is exceedingly complicated and there are many potential barriers to its successful implementation (Brockington et al. 2008): Conflicts over resource use—especially issues such as fishing rights—may prove intractable problems for which mutually satisfactory resolution may not be possible. In this context, participation of local stakeholders may merely give a platform for the legitimization of vested interests in the guise of community aspirations (Cooke and Kothari 2001). Existing or historic political, cultural or administrative structures may not have the flexibility to enable effective local community involvement, and may even result in disempowerment by forcing local stakeholders to interact within an intrinsically biased framework (Cooke and Kothari 2001). There may be insufficient political will to facilitate a move toward participatory management, especially if there are many and competing vested-interests involved. There may be insufficient interest or engagement of the local stakeholder community in the management of the resource to create strong and democratic local organizations. If the participatory process is perceived as being externally imposed and local stakeholders do not fully “buy-in” to it, then the process may break down when the initiative finishes or when financial support is withdrawn. Insufficient time may be allocated for the creation of local organizations and stakeholder groups and/or refinement of the participatory process. As a consequence of these limitations, well-meaning attempts at promoting co-management of natural resources have often increased, rather than decreased, social conflict (Waters 2006) leading some researchers to argue that there is a “need for much more complex and empirical approaches for doing conservation with local communities” (Brockington et al. 2008, p. 110). Brockington and his colleagues go on to suggest that a “more open-ended, empirical approach is much more likely to help us find approaches that are effective, equitable and more in line with local needs and values” (p. 111). In this research synopsis, we describe one such open-ended empirical approach to community-based natural resource management, developed over an 8-year initiative in a rainforest community in Amazonas State, Brazil. The conceptual basis of the approach, dubbed sustainable open systems/SOS (Ribeiro and Fabre 2003), was to gather detailed information on the cosmography (environmental knowledge, ideologies, and identities collectively developed and historically located) that the community uses to establish and to maintain its territory, and use this as the basis for sustainable management and formal resource use agreements. The term ‘open systems’ was chosen to reflect the inevitable flux of people and resources in and out of the management area or system. To better illustrate the SOS approach we present data from one of our case studies that took place in the Manacapuru district of Amazonas State, Brazil. The inhabitants of this district are broadly representative of the non-tribal peoples of Amazonia, being composed of individuals of mixed descent with different degrees of historical and cultural affiliation with the surrounding rainforest. Most families engage in productive activities that are common in inhabitants of the Amazon floodplain such as fishing, collecting and small scale agriculture (Furtado 1993a, 1993b). An eight year project was initiated in 1998 by the multidisciplinary PYRA research group (Integrated Program of Aquatic Resources and Floodplains) with the aim of designing a co-management system for local fisheries that was clearly aligned with local customs and practices and which would provide a robust framework for the development of sustainable practices.

Most biodiversity research aims at understanding the states and dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystems. To do so, biodiversity research increasingly relies on the use of digital products and services such as raw data archiving systems (e.g. structured databases or data repositories), ready-to-use datasets (e.g. cleaned and harmonized files with normalized measurements or computed trends) as well as associated analytical tools (e.g. model scripts in Github). Several world-wide initiatives facilitate the open access to biodiversity data, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) or GenBank, Predicts etc. Although these pave the way towards major advances in biodiversity research, they also typically deliver data products that are sometimes poorly informative as they fail to capture the genuine ecological information they intend to grasp. In other words, access to ready-to-use aggregated data products may sacrifice ecological relevance for data harmonization, resulting in over-simplified, ill-advised standard formats. This is singularly true when the main challenge is to match complementary data (large diversity of measured variables, integration of different levels of life organizations etc.) collected with different requirements and scattered in multiple databases. Improving access to raw data, and meaningful detailed metadata and analytical tools associated with standardized workflows is critical to maintain and maximize the generic relevance of ecological data. Consequently, advancing the design of digital products and services is essential for interoperability while also enhancing reproducibility and transparency in biodiversity research. To go further, a minimal common framework organizing biodiversity observation and data organization is needed. In this regard, the Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) concept might be a powerful way to boost progress toward this goal as well as to connect research communities worldwide. As a national Biodiversity Observation Network (BON) node, the French BON is currently embodied by a national research e-infrastructure called "Pôle national de données de biodiversité" (PNDB, formerly ECOSCOPE), aimed at simultaneously empowering the quality of scientific activities and promoting networking within the scientific community at a national level. Through the PNDB, the French BON is working on developing biodiversity data workflows oriented toward end services and products, both from and for a research perspective. More precisely, the two pillars of the PNDB are a metadata portal and a workflow-oriented web platform dedicated to the access of biodiversity data and associated analytical tools (Galaxy-E). After four years of experience, we are now going deeper into metadata specification, dataset descriptions and data structuring through the extensive use of Ecological Metadata Language (EML) as a pivot format. Moreover, we evaluate the relevance of existing tools such as Metacat/Morpho and DEIMS-SDR (Dynamic Ecological Information Management System - Site and dataset registry) in order to ensure a link with other initiatives like Environmental Data Initiative, DataOne and Long-Term Ecological Research related observation networks. Regarding data analysis, an open-source Galaxy-E platform was launched in 2017 as part of a project targeting the design of a citizen science observation system in France (“65 Millions d'observateurs”). Here, we propose to showcase ongoing French activities towards global challenges related to biodiversity information and knowledge dissemination. We particularly emphasize our focus on embracing the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data principles Wilkinson et al. 2016 across the development of the French BON e-infrastructure and the promising links we anticipate for operationalizing EBVs. Using accessible and transparent analytical tools, we present the first online platform allowing the performance of advanced yet user-friendly analyses of biodiversity data in a reproducible and shareable way using data from various data sources, such as GBIF, Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), eBIRD, iNaturalist and environmental data such as climate data.

Five years ago, the value of biodiversity open data was scarcely recognized in Taiwan. This posed a significant challenge to the Taiwan Biodiversity Infomation Facility (TaiBIF), our national node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), in its sustained efforts to enhance data publishing capacities. Notably, non-academic entities, both governmental and industrial, were reluctant to invest resources in data management and publication, questioning the benefits beyond purely research-oriented returns. At the time, Taiwan had fewer than a million published records domestically, while GBIF held around 3 million occurrence records for Taiwan, largely unused by local users. We speculated that this discrepancy in data usage stemmed from three factors: (1) lack of species names in the local language within the occurrence data, (2) missing locally important species attributes, such as conservation status and national red list categories, and (3) absence of a culturally relatable local portal promoting biodiversity data usage. To address these issues, we launched the Taiwan Biodiversity Network (TBN) website in 2018, localizing global data from GBIF and integrating missing information from local data sources. Collaborating with wildlife illustrators, we designed a user-friendly data interface to lessen the system's technical or academic barriers. This effort led to a doubling of website visitors and data download requests annually, and in recent years, biodiversity open data has become a vital component in environmental impact assessments. This upward trend heightened the recognition of the value of biodiversity open data, inciting organizations, such as initially data-conservative government agencies and private sectors with no obligatory data-sharing, to invest in data management and mobilization. This advancement also catalyzed the formation of the Taiwan Biodiversity Information Alliance (TBIA), actively promoting cross-organizational collaborations on data integration. Today, Taiwan offers more than 19 million globally accessible occurrence records and data for more than 28,000 species. While the surge in data volume can certainly be credited to the active local citizen science community, we believe the expanded coverage of species and data types is a result of a growing community supportive of biodiversity open data. This was made possible by the establishment of a local portal that effectively bridged the gap between global data and local needs. We hope our experience will motivate other Asian countries to create analogous local portals using global open data sources like GBIF, illustrating the value of biodiversity open data to decision-makers and overcoming resource limitations that impede investments in biodiversity informatics.

Freshwater biodiversity is critically understudied in Rwanda, and to date there has not been an efficient mechanism to integrate freshwater biodiversity information or make it accessible to decision-makers, researchers, private sector or communities, where it is needed for planning, management and the implementation of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). A framework to capture and distribute freshwater biodiversity data is crucial to understanding how economic transformation and environmental change is affecting freshwater biodiversity and resulting ecosystem services. To optimize conservation efforts for freshwater ecosystems, detailed information is needed regarding current and historical species distributions and abundances across the landscape. From these data, specific conservation concerns can be identified, analyzed and prioritized. The purpose of this project is to establish and implement a long-term strategy for freshwater biodiversity data mobilization, sharing, processing and reporting in Rwanda. The expected outcome of the project is to support the mandates of the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA), the national agency in charge of environmental monitoring and the implementation of Rwanda’s NBSAP, and the Center of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resources Management (CoEB). The project also aligns with the mission of the Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS) to enhance sustainable management of natural resources in the Albertine rift region. Specifically, organizational structure, technology platforms, and workflows for the biodiversity data capture and mobilization are enhanced to promote data availability and accessibility to improve Rwanda’s NBSAP and support other decision-making processes. The project is enhancing the capacity of technical staff from relevant government and non-government institutions in biodiversity informatics, strengthening the capacity of CoEB to achieve its mission as the Rwandan national biodiversity knowledge management center. Twelve institutions have been identified as data holders and the digitization of these data using Darwin Core standards is in progress, as well as data cleaning for the data publication through the ARCOS Biodiversity Information System (http://arbmis.arcosnetwork.org/). The release of the first national State of Freshwater Biodiversity Report is the next step. CoEB is a registered publisher to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and holds an Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) account on the ARCOS portal. This project was developed for the African Biodiversity Challenge, a competition coordinated by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and funded by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation which supports on-going efforts to enhance the biodiversity information management activities of the GBIF Africa network. This project also aligns with SANBI’s Regional Engagement Strategy, and endeavors to strengthen both emerging biodiversity informatics networks and data management capacity on the continent in support of sustainable development.

Challenges in Curating Interdisciplinary Data in the Biodiversity Research Community

The ecosystem approach—as endorsed by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) in 2000—is a strategy for holistic, sustainable, and equitable natural resource management, to be implemented via the 12 Malawi Principles. These principles describe the need to manage nature in terms of dynamic ecosystems, while fully engaging with local peoples. It is an ambitious concept. Today, the term is common throughout the research and policy literature on environmental management. However, multiple meanings have been attached to the term, resulting in confusion. We reviewed references to the ecosystem approach from 1957 to 2012 and identified 3 primary uses: as an alternative to ecosystem management or ecosystem-based management; in reference to an integrated and equitable approach to resource management as per the CBD; and as a term signifying a focus on understanding and valuing ecosystem services. Although uses of this term and its variants may overlap in meaning, typically, they do not entirely reflect the ethos of the ecosystem approach as defined by the CBD. For example, there is presently an increasing emphasis on ecosystem services, but focusing on these alone does not promote decentralization of management or use of all forms of knowledge, both of which are integral to the CBD’s concept. We highlight that the Malawi Principles are at risk of being forgotten. To better understand these principles, more effort to implement them is required. Such efforts should be evaluated, ideally with comparative approaches, before allowing the CBD’s concept of holistic and socially engaged management to be abandoned or superseded. It is possible that attempts to implement all 12 principles together will face many challenges, but they may also offer a unique way to promote holistic and equitable governance of natural resources. Therefore, we believe that the CBD’s concept of the ecosystem approach demands more attention.La Necesidad de Desenredar Conceptos Clave del Argot Ambiente-EstrategiaResumenLa estrategia ambiental – como es promocionada por la Convención Biológica sobre Diversidad en 2000 – es una estrategia para un manejo holístico, sustentable y equitativo de recursos naturales, que habrá de implementarse por vía de los 12 Principios de Malawi. Estos principios describen la necesidad de manejar la naturaleza en términos de ecosistemas dinámicos, mientras se compromete totalmente con las personas locales. Es un concepto ambicioso. Hoy en día, el término es común en la investigación y la literatura de políticas sobre el manejo ambiente. Sin embargo, se han relacionado múltiples significados con el término, lo que resulta en confusión. Revisamos referencias a la estrategia ambiental de 1957 a 2012 e identificamos tres usos principales: como una alternativa para manejo ambiental o basado en ecosistemas; en referencia a una estrategia integrada y equitativa para el manejo de recursos según la CBD; y como un término que indica un enfoque en el entendimiento y la valuación de los servicios ambientales. Aunque los usos de este término y sus variantes pueden traslaparse en su significado, típicamente no reflejan en su totalidad los valores de la estrategia ambiental como fue definida por la CBD. Por ejemplo, actualmente hay un énfasis creciente en los servicios ambientales, pero enfocarse solamente en estos no promueve la descentralización del manejo o el uso de todas las formas de conocimiento, siendo ambas integrales para el concepto de la CBD. Resaltamos que los Principios de Malawi están en riesgo de ser olvidados. Para entender mejor estos principios, se requiere de más esfuerzo para implementarlos. Dichos esfuerzos deben ser evaluados, idóneamente con estrategias comparativas, antes de permitir que el concepto de la CBD de manejo holístico y comprometido socialmente sea abandonado o reemplazado. Es posible que los intentos por implementar los 12 principios juntos enfrentarán muchos obstáculos, pero también pueden ofrecer una forma única de promover el gobierno holístico y equitativo de los recursos naturales. Así, creemos que el concepto de estrategia ambiental de la CBD exige mayor atención.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is increasingly used to monitor biodiversity, biosecurity and invasive species, providing insights into species presence across ecosystems. As eDNA datasets grow, interoperability and accessibility are crucial. OBIS Australia (OBIS-AU), Australia’s node of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), hosted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) National Collections and Marine Infrastructure (NCMI), promotes use of the DNA Derived Data Extension in Darwin Core (DwC) to standardise publication of eDNA and metabarcoding data Wieczorek et al. (2012), Abarenkov et al. (2023). OBIS-AU has published over 26 datasets with 21 million eDNA records to the OBIS. OBIS-AU is developing a scalable and interoperable eDNA data publishing pipeline that integrates tools such as the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable eDNA (FAIRe) suite and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Metabarcoding Data Toolkit (MDT) to transform diverse eDNA source data into Darwin Core Archives (DwC-A) for publication to OBIS, GBIF, and Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). By leveraging metadata standards including DwC, DNA Derived Data Extension, Minimum Information about any (X) Sequence (MIxS) and the FAIRe metadata checklist, the pipeline enables standardised, FAIR-compliant data publishing Takahashi et al. (2025), Meyer et al. (2023). It supports multiple transformation pathways, ensuring that eDNA datasets are consistent, reusable, and aligned with global biodiversity data infrastructures. The FAIR eDNA initiative enhances the FAIRness of eDNA data by extending standards like DwC and MIxS with eDNA-tailored metadata terms Takahashi et al. (2025). The FAIRe tools (FAIRe-ator, FAIRe-fier, and FAIRe2MDT) facilitate creation, validation, and conversion of standardised metadata to improve interoperability and reusability across platforms. The Metabarcoding Data Toolkit (MDT) is an open-source web tool that streamlines publishing of eDNA metabarcoding data by converting common data structures [e.g., Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) tables, taxonomy, metadata, Format for All Sequences from All Species (FASTA) files] into DwC-A GBIF Secretariat (2024). This modular design allows the pipeline to accommodate diverse data types and processing workflows while ensuring compatibility with global biodiversity data standards. The pipeline as shown in Fig. 1 provides four main pathways for converting source data into DwC-A and publishing them via the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT): Directly publishing data already formatted as DwC-A; Transforming source data using a simple DwC pipeline with custom DwC transformation script; Generating DwC-A file from source data via the MDT tool; and Using FAIRe tools and converting it to DwC-A via the MDT tool or a custom transformation script. Directly publishing data already formatted as DwC-A; Transforming source data using a simple DwC pipeline with custom DwC transformation script; Generating DwC-A file from source data via the MDT tool; and Using FAIRe tools and converting it to DwC-A via the MDT tool or a custom transformation script. The Australian Microbiome (AM) Initiative is a national collaborative research program characterising microbial diversity across Australia’s terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, and marine environments. The AM data pipeline depicted in Fig. 2 transforms data stored in the AM Data Portal using the MDT tool to generate DwC-A for publication to global repositories. The Globalising Marine Biodiversity Observations (GLOMBO) Partnership is a collaboration between CSIRO and the Minderoo Foundation aimed at improving the large-scale monitoring of Australia’s vast marine ecosystems by deploying automated eDNA sampling systems to gather samples continuously during voyages, with the first installation taking place on CSIRO’s research vessel Investigator . This approach will be expanded through a network of “ships of opportunity,” encompassing research, commercial, and tourist vessels that contribute to a nationwide eDNA monitoring effort. The scalable data pipeline is proposed to automate, integrate, and disseminate eDNA datasets, enabling comprehensive, real-time insights into marine biodiversity across Australia’s oceans as illustrated in Fig. 3. Recording eDNA-derived species occurrences presents several challenges. One example is taxonomic ambiguity, often caused by incomplete reference databases like GenBank, World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), Barcode of Life Data (BOLD), or SILVA. Linking eDNA sequence reads to biodiversity occurrence records is complex and requires expert knowledge and infrastructure integrating sequence data, metadata, and taxonomy. Technical barriers, limited engagement, and lack of incentives to make data accessible, hinder open access to eDNA data. OBIS-AU is addressing these challenges by exploring tools like GBIF’s MDT, OBIS’s Pacific Islands Marine bioinvasions Alert Network (PacMAN) pipeline, FAIRe tools, and AI-based tools as well as expert support and developing new automation pipelines to assist data publishers. OBIS-AU has published eDNA data using DwC Occurrence Core and DNA Derived Data Extension and is now testing a publication model with the DwC Event Core to better capture sampling context and improve integration, interoperability, and reuse of complex eDNA datasets. OBIS-AU intends to align with the new DwC Data Package to support modular publishing of marine biodiversity data.

<h3>Statement of Purpose</h3> The role of private industries in the pandemic of road traffic injuries (RTIs) is understudied. This project aimed to propose variables which account for the prominent influence of the motor vehicle and alcohol industries in road safety to be included in global road safety analyses and data sources. <h3>Methods/Approach</h3> The ‘commercial determinants of health’ (CDoH) framework refers to strategies and approaches used by the private sector to promote products and choices that are detrimental to health. Marketing, lobbying, supply chains, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are the primary channels through which corporate influence is exerted. A literature review was conducted to identify evidence of these pathways influencing road safety. Global road safety data sources were reviewed to summarize existing variables which can be used to account for the influence of CDoH. <h3>Results</h3> Based on the evidence retrieved from the literature and existing data sources, we propose 15 new variables to better understand the role of motor vehicle and alcohol industry activities in driving road safety outcomes. The variables listed may be applied at any level of governance (city, provincial, national, etc.) and then aggregated onto the global level. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Existing global road safety data sources fail to account for the commercial determinants of road safety. The evidence highlighting the role of motor vehicle and alcohol industry activities in shaping road safety is overwhelming and calls for attempts to mitigate these influences. The inclusion of such variables can enable a greater understanding of how the motor vehicle and alcohol industries influence road safety. <h3>Significance</h3> Novel strategies are needed to address the growing burden of RTIs and other injuries. The CDoH framework used in this project offers an innovative approach which may be applied to address other injuries across the lifespan.

A Sponsor’s View on Postmarketing Regulatory Commitments Involving Human Drug Products

Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) focuses on the collective management of ecosystems to promote human well-being and aims to devolve authority for ecosystem management to the local (community) level. CBNRM therefore requires strong investments in capacity development of local institutions and governance structures. CBNRM has come under strong criticism for its failures to deliver real benefits to communities. In this paper we explore the reasons for the frequent failure of CBNRM. We postulate that good governance buffers CBNRM against unexpected change, notably conflicts, especially in the early stages when income generation, infrastructure development and capacity development have not yet taken place. We assess the key characteristics of CBNRM governance systems that could perform this buffering function, using case study examples from Macubeni, Nqabara, Makuleke and Richtersveld to support our propositions. In our case studies, 11 strategies have been used to increase the incidence of success of CBNRM: understand and describe the social-ecological system; establish and communicate a clear vision; build on local organizations; plan ahead; create rules for resource use and enforce them; communicate the vision, plan and rules; develop management capacity; finance the initial stages of the initiative; work within available legal frameworks; monitor and learn all the time; and create lasting incentives. Despite these strategies there are, however, a number of obstinate implementation challenges, related to governance shortcomings and external factors which management cannot control. We therefore propose seven additional strategies to promote good governance in CBNRM: 1. Develop knowledge networks that draw on the experience and wisdom of a wide range of key individuals. 2. Establish formalised decision-making structures (e.g. multi-level project steering committees) with clear constitutions and codes of conduct. 3. Clearly define and legitimise conflict resolution procedures. 4. Ensure acceptance of the governance structure by community members. 5. Obtain formal commitment to well-defined roles and responsibilities by key individuals. 6. Establish tangible incentives to key individuals for meeting their commitments. 7. Develop the capacity for facilitation to promote communication. Local communities, government and scientists have important roles to play in maintaining these knowledge and governance networks through adaptive co-management.

Would community conservation initiatives benefit from external financial oversight? A framed field experiment in Namibia’s communal conservancies

The establishment, persistence, and scaling of marine community-based natural resource management in four coastal districts in Tanzania