[Taxacom] Who uses biodiversity data and why?

[Donat Agosti]

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 9:18 AM
To: TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Who uses biodiversity data and why?

A couple of comments on this thread. Firstly, I hope GBIF are reading  
this thread...

Second, leaving aside the issue of the extent of local, "private"  
knowledge, I wonder whether part of the problem is that services like  
GBIF -- valuable as they are -- aren't addressing some important  
questions that many people actually have. For example, Google Maps  
employs massive amounts of global data, but people use it to address  
local (sometimes very local) questions: where does Joe live? what  
hotels are near? where can we eat? etc. The fact that Google Maps  
"mashups" have taken off suggests this is information people want.

-> this, I am afraid, is exactly one of the main issues, why systematics
data is hardly used in conservation, that there is a disconnect between the
two fields. A park manager, for example, wants to know exactly where a
species has been recorded in his park, not in a square of 10km to 1 degree
(which is about the error range of retrospective georeferencing). How can
you protect a threatened frog recorded somewhere in a polygon on the
Usambara Hills? Could it be, that the Global Taxonomy Initiative is grounded
out of the same reason and we can not deliver in target2010?
We can not patronize the users of systematics data - new chances through
Internet and data sharing, new ideas, but we can assure, that there is a
link from global to local data.

Donat




I'm not sure the issue is making a globally available (which is  
essential, if only because it is probably the case that somebody  
somewhere else in the world can make better use of the data than  
you), but that the way that data is accessed, queried, and displayed  
is within a global framework - "where in the world does species x  
occur?", whereas I think Bob Mesibov is asking "what occurs near me?".

Again, I suspect this is partly a case of the taxonomic community  
developing services that we think would be useful (I like to see  
species distributions on a gobal map), rather than services that  
people outside our community would actually use.

As a trivial example, it's the difference between knowing that the  
Adeile Penguin occurs natively in Antarctica, versus knowing that I  
can see a stuffed specimen in my university here in Glasgow, and see  
them live in Edinburgh zoo 45 mins away by car.

Regards

Rod


----------------------------------------
Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom

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Fax: +44 141 330 2792
email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
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