scholarly journals Towards a Post-Graduate Level Curriculum for Biodiversity Informatics. Perspectives from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Community

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatima Parker-Allie ◽  
Francisco Pando ◽  
Anders Telenius ◽  
Jean Ganglo ◽  
Danny Vélez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biological Data ◽  
Initial Assessment ◽  
Biodiversity Informatics ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Academic Teaching ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Learning Platforms ◽  
Global Biodiversity ◽  
Biodiversity Information

Biodiversity informatics is a new and evolving field, requiring efforts to develop capacity and a curriculum for this field of science. The main objective was to summarise the level of activity and the efforts towards developing biodiversity informatics curricula, for work-based training and/or academic teaching at universities, taking place within the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) countries and its associated network. A survey approach was used to identify existing capacities and resources within the network. Most of GBIF Nodes survey respondents (80%) are engaged in onsite training activities, with a focus on work-based professionals, mostly researchers, policy-makers and students. Training topics include data mobilisation, digitisation, management, publishing, analysis and use, to enable the accessibility of analogue and digital biological data that currently reside as scattered datasets. An initial assessment of academic teaching activities highlighted that countries in most regions, to varying degrees, were already engaged in the conceptualisation, development and/or implementation of formal academic programmes in biodiversity informatics, including programmes in Benin, Colombia, Costa Rica, Finland, France, India, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan and Togo. Digital e-learning platforms were an important tool to help build capacity in many countries. In terms of the potential in the Nodes network, 60% expressed willingness to be recruited or commissioned for capacity enhancement purposes. Contributions and activities of various country nodes across the network have been highlighted and a working curriculum framework has been defined.

scholarly journals Towards a Curriculum for Biodiversity Informatics

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatima Parker-Allie ◽  
Francisco Pando ◽  
Jean Ganglo ◽  
Anders Telenius ◽  
Danny Vélez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biological Data ◽  
Academic Programs ◽  
Initial Assessment ◽  
Biodiversity Informatics ◽  
Teaching Activities ◽  
Academic Teaching ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Learning Platforms ◽  
High Level

Biodiversity informatics has been characterized as a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field, which aims to bring together the areas of biodiversity and informatics. A study was conducted looking at the current level of activity within the GBIF Participant countries and its associated network in relation to work-based training and/or academic teaching at universities, in the field of biodiversity informatics. It was intended to get an overview of GBIF Node Managers, (hence, member countries), already engaged in developing course curricula, or in providing training, and whether they would be willing to share resources or enter into collaborations, to further elaborate this field of science. This investigation followed a survey approach, conducted globally across the GBIF community to identify the existing capacities and resources within the network. The results indicated that the vast majority of GBIF Nodes survey respondents, are engaged in onsite training activities in biodiversity informatics areas, with a focus on professionals, mostly researchers, policy makers and students. Training includes data digitization, management, publishing, analysis and use, to enable the accessibility of analogue and digital biological data which currently resides as scattered databases/datasets. A list containing the associated URL's for training and dissemination activities in GBIF Nodes has been developed, based on survey results, and will be presented. An initial assessment of the academic teaching activities indicated that many countries across most regions were already engaged in the conceptualisation, development and/or implementation of formal academic programs in biodiversity informatics including Benin, Colombia, Costa Rica, Finland, France, India, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan and Togo. This study also identified that digital e-learning platforms were a very important tool to help build capacity in a number of countries. To assess the level of potential in the network to support academic teaching and work-based training, sixty percent indicated that they would be willing to be recruited or commissioned to support teaching activities, demonstrating the value of the Nodes network to support the development of biodiversity informatics globally. The contributions and activities of various nodes across the network will be highlighted and a working high-level curriculum framework will be discussed.

scholarly journals An alliance for biodiversity knowledge: Rethinking international collaboration in biodiversity informatics

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Hobern ◽  
Joseph Miller
Keyword(s):  
Building Blocks ◽  
Coordination Mechanism ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Biodiversity Informatics ◽  
Global Alliance ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Sustainable Solutions ◽  
Biodiversity Knowledge ◽  
Global Biodiversity ◽  
Biodiversity Information

There has been major progress over the last two decades in digitising historical knowledge of biodiversity and in making biodiversity data freely and openly accessible. Interlocking efforts bring together international partnerships and networks, national, regional and institutional projects and investments and countless individual contributors, spanning diverse biological and environmental research domains, government agencies and non-governmental organisations, citizen science and commercial enterprise. However, current efforts remain inefficient and inadequate to address the global need for accurate data on the world's species and on changing patterns and trends in biodiversity. Significant challenges include imbalances in regional engagement in biodiversity informatics activity, uneven progress in data mobilisation and sharing, the lack of stable persistent identifiers for data records, redundant and incompatible processes for cleaning and interpreting data and the absence of functional mechanisms for knowledgeable experts to curate and improve data. The first Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC) in 2012 delivered the Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook (GBIO, Hobern et al. 2012), an architectural vision for the major components of a distributed global infrastructure for biodiiversity information, but realigning the work of existing organisations and projects to achieve this vision remains challenging. Recognising the need for greater alignment between efforts at all scales, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) convened the second Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC2) in July 2018 to propose a coordination mechanism for developing shared roadmaps for biodiversity informatics. GBIC2 attendees reached consensus on the need for a global alliance for biodiversity knowledge, learning from examples such as the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) and the open software communities under the Apache Software Foundation. These initiatives provide models for multiple stakeholders with decentralised funding and independent governance to combine resources and develop sustainable solutions that address common needs. GBIF was asked to coordinate next steps following GBIC2, including publication of a paper, Connecting data and expertise: a new alliance for biodiversity knowledge (Hobern et al. 2019). The supplementary materials for the paper include PDF brochures explaining the concept in eleven languages. During 2019, GBIF is coordinating further consultations to establish an optimal model for the governance and operations of the alliance and to advance collaboration around some of the major building blocks of the GBIO. Collaboration at this scale, and across all aspects of biodiversity information, is essential for effective delivery of important information products such as the Essential Biodiversity Variables and the planned pan-European natural history collections infrastructure, DiSSCo. This presentation explains the goals for this alliance and updates on progress during 2019 in operationalising the concept.

scholarly journals Do Fabaceae species with physical dormancy occur mostly in the temperate ecosystems? A rebuttal to using global biodiversity information facility (GBIF) analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-111
Author(s):  
Ganesh K. Jaganathan
Keyword(s):  
Distribution Models ◽  
Physical Dormancy ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Tropical Ecosystem ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Animal Distribution ◽  
Tropical Vegetation ◽  
Global Biodiversity ◽  
Seed Coats ◽  
Biodiversity Information

Physical dormancy (PY) is a phenomenon wherein seed coats are impermeable to water. This feature prevents immediate germination in seeds, therefore considered as an adaptive trait in species of Mediterranean and tropical ecosystem, where rainy season is the most favorable time for germination. However, using dataset available for Fabaceae collected from global biodiversity information facility (GBIF), the largest family with PY, recent studies have provided evidence contrasting this assertion. This viewpoint has arisen owing to the fact that the data were gleaned by georeferencing the Fabaceae species distribution from GBIF, which is under-represented for the tropical vegetation. This is similar to other reports available in other plant and animal distribution models, where GBIF data is not an accurate representation of distribution. A closer inspection of the data available in literature suggests that using GBIF database alone to map the distribution of Fabaceae species represents the extreme end of biased data causing misperception and could mislead the scientific community, particularly ecologists, conservationists and/or policy makers.

scholarly journals The InBIO Barcoding Initiative Database: DNA barcodes of Portuguese Diptera 01

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Ferreira ◽  
Rui Andrade ◽  
Ana Gonçalves ◽  
Pedro Sousa ◽  
Joana Paupério ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Level ◽  
Distribution Data ◽  
Dna Barcodes ◽  
Online Database ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Life Data ◽  
Tagus River ◽  
Global Biodiversity ◽  
Biodiversity Information ◽  
Dipteran Species

The InBIO Barcoding Initiative (IBI) Diptera 01 dataset contains records of 203 specimens of Diptera. All specimens have been morphologically identified to species level, and belong to 154 species in total. The species represented in this dataset correspond to about 10% of continental Portugal dipteran species diversity. All specimens were collected north of the Tagus river in Portugal. Sampling took place from 2014 to 2018, and specimens are deposited in the IBI collection at CIBIO, Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources. This dataset contributes to the knowledge on the DNA barcodes and distribution of 154 species of Diptera from Portugal and is the first of the planned IBI database public releases, which will make available genetic and distribution data for a series of taxa. All specimens have their DNA barcodes made publicly available in the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) online database and the distribution dataset can be freely accessed through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

scholarly journals Using Global Biodiversity Information Facility Occurrence Data for Automated Invasive Alien Species Risk Mapping 

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Davis ◽  
Tim Adriaens ◽  
Rozemien De Troch ◽  
Peter Desmet ◽  
Quentin Groom ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alien Species ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Invasive Alien Species ◽  
Risk Assessments ◽  
Sampling Effort ◽  
Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽  
Global Biodiversity ◽  
Risk Maps ◽  
Species Occurrences ◽  
Biodiversity Information

To support invasive alien species risk assessments, the Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS) project has developed an automated, open, workflow incorporating state-of-the-art species distribution modelling practices to create risk maps using the open source language R. It is based on Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) data and openly published environmental data layers characterizing climate and land cover. Our workflow requires only a species name and generates an ensemble of machine-learning algorithms (Random Forest, Boosted Regression Trees, K-Nearest Neighbors and AdaBoost) stacked together as a meta-model to produce the final risk map at 1 km2 resolution (Fig. 1). Risk maps are generated automatically for standard Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) greenhouse gas emission scenarios and are accompanied by maps illustrating the confidence of each individual prediction across space, thus enabling the intuitive visualization and understanding of how the confidence of the model varies across space and scenario (Fig. 2). The effects of sampling bias are accounted for by providing options to: use the sampling effort of the higher taxon the modelled species belongs to (e.g., vascular plants), and to thin species occurrences. use the sampling effort of the higher taxon the modelled species belongs to (e.g., vascular plants), and to thin species occurrences. The risk maps generated by our workflow are defensible and repeatable and provide forecasts of alien species distributions under further climate change scenarios. They can be used to support risk assessments and guide surveillance efforts on alien species in Europe. The detailied modeling framework and code are available on GitHub: https://github.com/trias-project.

A Systematic Review of Gamification Within E-Learning

2022 ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Samuel Muthee Kamunya ◽  
Robert Obwocha Oboko ◽  
Elizaphan Muuro Maina ◽  
Evans Kirimi Miriti
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Systematic Reviews ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Learning Platform ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Learning Platforms ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
Enhanced Learning ◽  
User Motivation

The focus of this study was to review and evaluate the effectiveness of gamification within e-learning platforms. The study deployed systematic literature review methodology to evaluate how effective gamification has been used within e-learning platforms. The study used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Approach (PRISMA), starting with 366 articles, shifting to a final 34 articles for consideration. It was established that gamification positively influences and enhances learning within the e-learning platform. Therefore, the study recommends policy makers, designers, and implementers of e-learning platforms to consider incorporating gamification elements in order to increase user motivation and engagement for enhanced learning.

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