Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA)

Workshops, Conferences & Webinars

Open Access to, and documentation of, Mountain Biodiversity Data

Kunming, China, 29th-30th July 2009

Background

Inventorying and assessing mountain biodiversity is essential to improve understanding of, developing management strategies and conservation interventions for, and predicting and testing scientific hypotheses related to the mountain environment and beyond. The Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA), in cooperation with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), encourages a global effort to make biodiversity data accessible, mine biodiversity databases on mountain organisms, to achieve a better understanding of mountain biodiversity and predicting its changes. A synthesis of two GMBA workshops on “Data mining for global trends in Mountain Biodiversity” (CRC press/Taylor and Francis, available in Sept. 2009) provides a collection of reviewed and convincing studies using geo-referenced biodiversity data for biodiversity research and management. An interactive mountain biodiversity web portal will allow the free usage of GBIF data in a mountain specific context (soon available). A joint workshop on “Linking Geodata with Biodiversity Information in the Himalayas” with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in November 2008 aimed already to improve relevant biodiversity data from the Himalayan region and to provide open access to high quality geo-referenced biodiversity information

Aim of the workshop

Our aim is to help biodiversity researchers / data holders to become compliant with GBIF and to reach ISO and relevant GBIF standards (technology transfer), in order to increase the amount and quality of high quality geo-referenced data on mountain biodiversity provided online by standardization and harmonization of biodiversity information. The ultimate aim is to provide easy and open access to biodiversity information and data on mountains to the wider regional and global change research community and global public (e.g. via the GBIF/GMBA Mountain Biodiversity Portal and the Mountain Geo-Portal of ICIMOD) and to develop a framework and partnerships for standardized biodiversity databases and for their dissemination through standard metadata systems commonly used elsewhere.

Participants

  • Dr. Eva Spehn (GMBA coordinator), GMBA office, Institute of Botany, University of Basel, Switzerland
  • Prof. Falk Huettmann (GMBA Steering Committee), University of Alaska, Fairbanks, USA
  • Prof. Sun Hang, Deputy director, Kunming Institute of Botany, China & GMBA Steering Committee
  • Dr. Zhou Zhekun, Head of the Department of Biogeography and Ecology, Kunming, China, in charge of the Database project of herbarium
  • Dr. Yang Yang, Kunming Institute of Botany, China
  • Dr. Shen Zehao, Department of Ecology, College of Environmental Sciences, and PKU-PSD Project Team, Peking University, China
  • Liu Ye, Department of Ecology, College of Environmental Sciences, Peking University, China
  • Prof. Jürg Stöcklin, Institute of Botany, University of Basel, Switzerland
  • Dr. Yamin Wang (IUCN SSC), Shandong University at Weihai,China
  • Zang Dacai, Southwest Forest College, Kunming, China
  • Nie Ze-long, Kunming Institute of Botany, China
  • Niu Yang, Kunming Institute of Botany, China
  • Chen Jianguo, Kunming Institute of Botany, China
  • Zhou Zhuo, Kunming Institute of Botany, China
  • Zhuang Huifu, Kunming Institute of Botany, China
  • Zhang Yu, Kunming Institute of Botany, China