BIOTA-FAPESP - supporting biodiversity, building partnerships, and filling the knowledge gaps / BIOTA-FAPESP - apoiando a biodiversidade, construindo parcerias e preenchendo as lacunas de conhecimento

Abstract ECO92, a United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, hosted by Brazil in 1992 was a catalyst for much activity on biodiversity in the State of São Paulo and eventually led to the establishment of BIOTA-FAPESP. BIOTA-FAPESP quickly evolved into a world-leading research program that has broadened to cover all aspects of biodiversity in the State from genes through species and to ecosystems and the interactions between them. Through the funding of multi-disciplinary projects, the development of collaborative links within the State, nationally and internationally, and the astute use of databases to link the program's project outputs it has set a platform for filling the biodiversity knowledge gaps. Having achieved much in the last two decades, it still has some way to go, but the stage is set.

A ECO92, Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento, realizada no Brasil em 1992, foi catalisadora de muita atividade sobre a biodiversidade no Estado de São Paulo e levou à criação do Programa BIOTA-FAPESP. O BIOTA-FAPESP rapidamente evoluiu para um programa de pesquisa líder mundial que se ampliou para cobrir todos os aspectos da biodiversidade do Estado, desde os genes, passando pelas espécies, até os ecossistemas e as interações entre eles. Por meio do financiamento de projetos multidisciplinares, do desenvolvimento de parcerias e colaborações estaduais, nacionais e internacionais, e do uso engenhoso de bancos de dados para integrar os resultados dos projetos do programa, o programa estabeleceu uma plataforma para preencher as lacunas de conhecimento da biodiversidade. O Programa BIOTA-FAPESP realizou muito nas últimas duas décadas e ainda tem um caminho a percorrer, mas a estrada já está pavimentada.

speciesLink: rich data and novel tools for digital assessments of biodiversity / speciesLink: dados valiosos e ferramentas inovadoras para avaliações digitais da biodiversidade

Abstract speciesLink is a large-scale biodiversity information portal that exists thanks to a broad collaborative network of people and institutions. CRIA's involvement with the scientific community of Brazil and other countries is responsible for the significant results achieved, currently reaching more than 15 million primary biodiversity data records, 95% of which are associated with preserved specimens and about 25% with high-quality digital images. The network provides data on over 200,000 species, of which over 110,000 occur in Brazil. This article describes thematic networks within speciesLink, as well as some of the most useful tools developed. The importance and contributions of speciesLink are outlined, as are concerns about securing stable budgetary support for such biodiversity data e-infrastructures. Here we review the value of speciesLink as a major source of biodiversity information for research, education, informed decision-making, policy development, and bioeconomy.

Resumo speciesLink é um portal de informações em larga escala sobre biodiversidade, que existe graças a uma ampla rede colaborativa de pessoas e instituições. O envolvimento do CRIA com a comunidade científica do Brasil e de outros países é responsável pelos resultados expressivos alcançados, atingindo atualmente mais de 15 milhões de registros de dados primários de biodiversidade, sendo 95% associados a espécimes preservados e cerca de 25% a imagens digitais de alta qualidade. A rede fornece dados sobre mais de 200.000 espécies, das quais mais de 110.000 ocorrem no Brasil. Este artigo descreve as redes temáticas do speciesLink, bem como algumas das ferramentas mais úteis desenvolvidas. A importância e as contribuições do speciesLink são destacadas, assim como as preocupações em garantir um apoio financeiro estável para e-infraestruturas de dados sobre biodiversidade. Aqui revisamos o valor do speciesLink como uma das principais fontes de informação sobre biodiversidade para pesquisa, educação, tomada de decisão, desenvolvimento de políticas e bioeconomia.

Herbarium data: Global biodiversity and societal botanical needs for novel research.

Building on centuries of research based on herbarium specimens gathered through time and around the globe, a new era of discovery, synthesis, and prediction using digitized collections data has begun. This paper provides an overview of how aggregated, open access botanical and associated biological, environmental, and ecological data sets, from genes to the ecosystem, can be used to document the impacts of global change on communities, organisms, and society; predict future impacts; and help to drive the remediation of change. Advocacy for botanical collections and their expansion is needed, including ongoing digitization and online publishing. The addition of non-traditional digitized data fields, user annotation capability, and born-digital field data collection enables the rapid access of rich, digitally available data sets for research, education, informed decision-making, and other scholarly and creative activities. Researchers are receiving enormous benefits from data aggregators including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), but effective collaboration around data infrastructures is needed when working with large and disparate data sets. Tools for data discovery, visualization, analysis, and skills training are increasingly important for inspiring novel research that improves the intrinsic value of physical and digital botanical collections.

A conceptual framework for quality assessment and management of biodiversity data.

The increasing availability of digitized biodiversity data worldwide, provided by an increasing number of institutions and researchers, and the growing use of those data for a variety of purposes have raised concerns related to the "fitness for use" of such data and the impact of data quality (DQ) on the outcomes of analyses, reports, and decisions. A consistent approach to assess and manage data quality is currently critical for biodiversity data users. However, achieving this goal has been particularly challenging because of idiosyncrasies inherent in the concept of quality. DQ assessment and management cannot be performed if we have not clearly established the quality needs from a data user's standpoint. This paper defines a formal conceptual framework to support the biodiversity informatics community allowing for the description of the meaning of "fitness for use" from a data user's perspective in a common and standardized manner. This proposed framework defines nine concepts organized into three classes: DQ Needs, DQ Solutions and DQ Report. The framework is intended to formalize human thinking into well-defined components to make it possible to share and reuse concepts of DQ needs, solutions and reports in a common way among user communities. With this framework, we establish a common ground for the collaborative development of solutions for DQ assessment and management based on data fitness for use principles. To validate the framework, we present a proof of concept based on a case study at the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University. In future work, we will use the framework to engage the biodiversity informatics community to formalize and share DQ profiles related to DQ needs across the community.