[Taxacom] Who uses biodiversity data and why?

[Bob Mesibov]

Wolfgang Lorenz cites Tom Ball:

"Free and open access to the world's biodiversity data through the 
collaborative medium of the Web is an important tool for the sustainable 
stewardship of Earth. Unlocking such data will lead to much better policy 
and resource-management choices locally, regionally and globally"

If I replace "Unlocking" with "Using" in the second sentence, I have an 
argument which I've now been hearing for at least 15 years. What I'm less 
familiar with is evidence that the argument is valid.

Before I get jumped on for the wrong reason: I'm familiar with many, many 
_local_ cases in which high-quality, easily accessible, species locality 
data has made intelligent conservation planning possible. I even know of a 
few _regional_ instances, although these were actually integrations of 
planning decisions first made at that local level using local data. But 
_global_?

If conservation and resource management planning is largely done at the 
local level, and if that planning can be adequately served by the locally 
idiosyncratic ways of storing, accessing and reporting biodiversity data, 
why have so many people worked so hard to achieve universal access to 
universal biodiversity data? Who uses the data at that global level, and for 
what specific purposes?

A colleague has suggested to me that the main beneficiaries of a push for 
global integration are local collections. They get encouragement and 
sometimes funding to "tidy up their bookkeeping". That's great, but I'm 
personally unaware of any instances in which decisions have been made from 
those "books" by planners without the biodiversity data first passing 
through a human filter for interpretation, and that filter was a 
biodiversity specialist.

Typical examples:

(1) A water management agency is planning a new storage for farm irrigation 
purposes. The agency does _not_ ask local collections: "What species records 
do you have for the area to be flooded?" Instead, it asks an in-house 
officer or a consultant: "Is the area to be flooded important for any 
species recorded from that neighbourhood?", and you don't get an answer to 
that question by simply examining locality records. You get it by talking to 
specialists.

(2) A flora conservation agency is considering a nomination to a threatened 
species list. The agency does _not_ simply ask local collections: "What 
records do you have for this species?". Instead, it asks an in-house officer 
or a consultant: "How much do we really know about the distribution of this 
species? How much additional field work do we need to establish whether or 
not this species is threatened?"

Am I missing something? Is "sustainable stewardship of Earth" genuinely made 
any easier by universal access to all biodiversity data, or is the real work 
of conservation still going to be done, for the foreseeable future, by local 
biodiversity experts using local data, in whatever format that data is 
stored?
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Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195

Tasmanian Multipedes
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/multipedes/mulintro.html
Spatial data basics for Tasmania
http://www.utas.edu.au/spatial/locations/index.html
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