Category: Information

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The pleasures and frustrations of combining biodiversity data

This website provides information on recommended locations, mainly in protected areas, suited for the establishment of genetic reserves for Avena, Beta, Brassica and Prunus targeted crop wild relative taxa across Europe, in the context of the AEGRO project. Available information includes ecogeographical data as well as an inventory of crop wild relatives belonging to the four target genera occurring at each location.

This is the map of the recommended sites:

Which is great, and even greater is the fact that you can look at individual species, and the suggested protected areas, using a nifty Google Maps plugin. This, for example, is the Estrecho site in southern Spain, which is where you find an endemic wild oat (among other things).

The problem is 1 that I can find no way of mashing these data up with anything else. For example, say you want to add Genesys data to see if any other species occur in this, or any other, protected area. I don’t see how. You know where those Genesys accessions are:

But there’s no way to combine the two. Or maybe you want to see if the area was affected by fires last summer. Can’t be done. You know where the fires occurred:

But there’s no way to combine the two. Whereas of course you can easily combine that NASA fire data with the Genesys data, simply by bringing both into Google Earth. 2

So I guess my plea is: if you’re going to use Google Maps or Google Earth to display your biodiversity data, please also make it downloadable. Maybe there was a reason why this couldn’t be done in this project. I’m all ears.

Oh, and there’s another thing while I’m indulging my hobbyhorses. Can’t we use some innovative approaches to add to these kinds of datasets? I mean, if it can be done for amphibians…

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Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: conference

AYSICCIK is, believe it or not, the snappy acronym for the African Young Scientists Initiative on Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge. And they’re drawing attention to an International Student Conference on Climate Change and Indigenous Knowledge Systems, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 15-17 August 2011. It is probably too late to apply for a scholarship, but you have until next Tuesday (31 May) to submit an abstract on one of the six conference themes. Food security is in there, as are indigenous knowledge, biodiversity management and other topics dear to us.

So, what are you waiting for? And if you do go, we would welcome reports.

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Nibbles: Spatial data, poverty, Livestock diseases, Romania, Cultural diversity, Iraqi marshes, Citizen science , Biohappiness, Beer!

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Safeguarding tangible agricultural heritage

There’s a great set of pictures of Kenyan traditional crops and food preparation on UNESCO’s Facebook page, in their Documenting Living Heritage series. This is part of an exhibition currently on at UNESCO’s HQ in Paris to raise awareness of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. I doubt there’s a photograph of the Gene Bank of Kenya, but that surely contributes to that goal too.