To improve the suitability of the Darwin Core standard for the research and management of alien species, the standard needs to express the native status of organisms, how well established they are and how they came to occupy a location. To facilitate this, we propose: 1. To adopt a controlled vocabulary for the existing Darwin Core term dwc:establishmentMeans 2. To elevate the pathway term from the Invasive Species Pathways extension to become a new Darwin Core term dwc:pathway maintained as part of the Darwin Core standard 3. To adopt a new Darwin Core term dwc:degreeOfEstablishment with an associated controlled vocabulary These changes to the standard will allow users to clearly state whether an occurrence of a species is native to a location or not, how it got there (pathway), and to what extent the species has become a permanent feature of the location. By improving Darwin Core for capturing and sharing these data, we aim to improve the quality of occurrence and checklist data in general and to increase the number of potential uses of these data.
Urban soundscape design involves creating outdoor spaces that are pleasing to the ear. One way to achieve this goal is to add or accentuate sounds that are considered to be desired by most users of the space, such that the desired sounds mask undesired sounds, or at least distract attention away from undesired sounds. In view of removing the need for a listening panel to assess the effectiveness of such soundscape measures, the interest for new models and techniques is growing. In this paper, a model of auditory attention to environmental sound is presented, which balances computational complexity and biological plausibility. Once the model is trained for a particular location, it classifies the sounds that are present in the soundscape and simulates how a typical listener would switch attention over time between different sounds. The model provides an acoustic summary, giving the soundscape designer a quick overview of the typical sounds at a particular location, and allows assessment of the perceptual effect of introducing additional sounds.
Observations reported by citizens are crucial to the ability of scientists to inform policy on biodiversity. This is particularly relevant in the case of preventing and controlling biological invasions; that is, the introduction and spread of species outside their natural ranges as a consequence of human activity. Such invasions of natural ecosystems represent one of the main threats to biodiversity, economy, and human well-being globally, and policies on tackling this issue require a strong evidence base that increasingly is built on citizen science. Many citizens are motivated to collect data for their own interest, while presumably, few expect to make a major impact on policy. The needs of policy-makers are not always aligned with the approaches used by citizens to collect and share data. Therefore, how can we motivate citizen science for the needs of policy without compromising the enjoyment that citizens gain from collecting biodiversity observations? How can policy-makers support citizens to collect the data they need?Solutions require two components, a combination of social and technological innovation. Initiatives aimed at supporting decision-making processes should involve more societal actors and be built in a more collaborative or even co-created manner with citizens, scientists, and policy-makers. Technological solutions can be achieved through regular, rapid, and open publication of biodiversity data products. We envisage frequent publication of maps and indicators from rapidly mobilized data, with clear pointers to gaps in knowledge. Improving the links between data collection and delivery of policy-relevant information demonstrates -to citizens and their organizations -the need for their data, and gives them a clear view on the impact of their data on policy. This visibility also empowers stakeholder organizations in the policy development process.
No abstract
Species checklists are a crucial source of information for research and policy. Unfortunately, many traditional species checklists vary wildly in their content, format, availability and maintenance. The fact that these are not open, findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) severely hampers fast and efficient information flow to policy and decision-making that are required to tackle the current biodiversity crisis. Here, we propose a reproducible, semi-automated workflow to transform traditional checklist data into a FAIR and open species registry. We showcase our workflow by applying it to the publication of the Manual of Alien Plants, a species checklist specifically developed for the Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS) project. Our approach combines source data management, reproducible data transformation to Darwin Core using R, version control, data documentation and publication to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). This checklist publication workflow is openly available for data holders and applicable to species registries varying in thematic, taxonomic or geographical scope and could serve as an important tool to open up research and strengthen environmental decision-making.
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