BITC / BBII - 02 Intro to BITC
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So let's talk about this course
Over dinner last night we had a conversation about what good could this course do
it was a very useful conversation because here we have around the table
a very excellent example of a biodiversity informatics institution XXXXXXXXXX
in a developing country, in an African country
that has done very very nice work in making a lot of biodiversity data available
we have a representative from Brazil
who has similarly taken a country from essentially nothing to a major amount of biodiversity information online
Krishtalka is coming from a university in the US
and also I remember in his job interview he said
"you hire me, I place KU as one of the world leaders in biodiversity informatics"
you remember that? and you'll hear from Jorge Soberon who was in Mexico
in Mexico the government decided to step into this world of biodiversity informatics
and did rather successfully
so those are kind of fore-case studies
but if anyone of you in your home country were to be leading a parallel effort
let's say Madagascar, Ghana or Congo where ever
the very interesting fact is that your set of constellation is going to be completely different
so Kris has to deal with the academic work
and how do you sell biodiversity informatics to people who care about academic performance
and Tania and Jorge has to deal with this ona governmental basis
how do you sell this to the minister or whoever it is is one or two or three steps up in the governmental hierarchy
and XXXXXXXXX has done this from an independent institution
so there are all sorts of different situations
there are all sorts of different contexts
and certainly the sets of players are going to be different for in every single country
so the question is what can we do usefully in a week with a bunch of smart people around the table
right? some who have done this before and some well placed potentially to do this in the future
so what do we need. Well, you know the basic message
we are talking about biodiversity laws, laws of the ecosystem services
and governments and NGOs and entities worldwide
I am very conscious that these are important losses.
certainly data exist. we don't after know how much data exist
whether it is enough and very very frequently nobody put the data together
so I make the difference between data which were just can raw materials this is information
so the data exist in some unknown quantity and information is awfully scarce
I pointed out throughout to you is that if you have particular interest in xxxxx
nobody is going to take care of the best interest of xxxxx with respect to Biodiversity
except xxxxx and so if there are regional, national, sub national, local concerns
xxxxxxxx people who are concerned with those issues.
and so the kind of logical consequence of that sort of reasoning is the abilities,facilities, the experties, to get this work done
needs to be assembled on these levels each at it's own level of need
and hopefully feeding between levels
Hopefully the Zambi?? is supporting the next level down the district, state, province level
and the district state province level hopefully is hopefully helping individual natural areas, OK
so that's the rationale behind this course
but what we see as far as information, this is my opinion, may be it's completely wrong,and may be we can have a good argument about it
btu what do we see as far as information, here is a complilation of biodiversity hot spots
distribution and protection of conservation priority areas
here are the hot spots around the world and there are some really interesting things in here
notice that all of madagascar is a hot spot right
but notice that the only thing important in South Africa is this southern and south western fringe
all that other stuff, notice, Sorry John but Congo is pretty much left out
so where does this come from
and what drives this being important versus this
not that the NIgerians pay their dues and the Congolese not
or what's behind this?
in this case I have looked at this quite carefully and it's apparently a distillation of diversity and threat
that's what it is on paper, but there is no quantitative protocol
htere is no XXXXX that takes you to identifying a hotspot
so again if the DRC doesn't look at it's interests and do it's information development
we can't sit back and wait for global interest to do this for them
here is another one. "Important bird areas in Africa and the associated islands"
priority sites for conservation. what do they all have in common?
I could have put up 20 more examples. what do these have in common?
they all refer to the biodiversity. and they are all in some sense spatial or geographic OK
interestingly they are all developed by global entities
some organizations that calls itself world.. something or mammals of... but not any entity that is interested or focussed on any region
and so these organizations have global interests and global motives
and their objectives are their objectives. they may be very noble
but they may not serve the continent or region, national subnational or local
certainly there have been such efforts.
hre is an example from Colombia
that relates protected areas to endemic bird areas
and protected areas to well preserved forests
and here is something I pulled off the Zambi page
where it's a relation of protected areas to priority and and potential quaters to connect up areas
so this sort of product comes out of national and regional efforts
that can look to national and regional interests
but it's an awfully complex field
so this is from a paper that a couple of us got together and published few years ago
it's a framework. it may not be the best or the only framework
but essentially it takes us through genotype through phenotype through organisimal operations
the environment to the affects of humans
and we kind of front and center put niche and population ecology
basically because that's the field that we have worked in
and over here biodiversity loss
and we have all of these information products that come out of that it might be hypothesis as far as the evolutionary history
might be taxonomy might be information about geographic distribution
forecast of change
and very specific conservation management strategies
but to take on these challeneges like I showed you examples of we really need to take some set of this network
and tie the pieces together
for example for XXXXXXXXXXXXXX of movements of large African mammals maybe we need to deal with geographic distributions and
environment, human presence
and get that piece of this network
this requires expertise, experience, infrastructure
so that's the motivation behind why develope biodiversity informatics institutions here in South Africa or in Kenya or where ever
what we are trying to do in this course is talk about the "why"
and we'll do that via a series of 4 case studies
Zambi?? Conabi, XXXXXX, KU
we are going to talk about strategies or atleast elements of strategies
that are potentiially important in implementing institutions
of this sort. I hope that there will be a lot of ideas of interest thrown around and debated
I hope you can keep this at a first name basis
lets have some good in depth discussions
and in creating the program we tried our very best to leave a lot of time for discussion
and then the perpetual goal of of XXXXXXXXXXX and I also want to capture it digitally so that it can go beyond this group of people
so here is a really quick overview of the program where you see blue is where I'll be talking to you
so this is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. this is the morning and this is the afternoon
so you can see this green block and that is Taniya and Selvan talking to us about some of the Zanbi experience
i'll come back after lunch and give a brief comment about importance of open access to data
and then look at this, round table and open question and answer which is to say free form whatever you guys want to talk about
so make a list of questions, jot things down, let's make very good use of that free time most of the afternoon after lunch
tomorrow we are going to start out with 3 videos that are lectures and topics that Jorge Soberon taped for us
so tomorrow we'll start out with some general comments from Jorge Soberon about what is policy
and how does biodiversity and biodiversity information relate to and translate into policy
Then Krishtalka will talk to us about an academic example
how you take the university of Kansas
and make it into the biodiversity informatics institution
after lunch I will come in with some general commentary
about what Icall the biodiversity initiative gain. essentially you come in raise $10 million very quickly
and play a bunch of people exist for 5 years and disappear
and then look at this more time for discussion
3rd day I'll start off with some comments from XXXXXX about sharing data vs XXXX data, what XXXX likes to refer to as data crocodiles
I'll give some comments. we'll have a bit of a discussion
and in the afternoon we'll get back to the XXXX example
this is a stand alone institution in Brazil
that has done some very very nice work at XXXXX biodiversity data at Brazil
and another video from Jorge and a discussion. hopefully live with Jorge
we'll come for some more conabio on friday morning
more of Kris but he's wearing a XXXX XXXX this time
some commentary from XXXXXXXX on similar lines and then a lot of more discussions
so you see 30, 40, 50% of this course is what we make of it by having some really good really incisive really carefully XXXX out discuaaions
so don't be shy.
each day we'll start the lectures at 9 and in 2 hrs a half hour break
so that you can shake the cob webs out of your heads
another hour and a half and then lunch
another hour and a half a break and then another hour, then we stop
so a lot of break time and ideally that time will be spent in one on one discussions or five on five discussions
but the idea is use the whole day. we will ask you to be out at the cabs in hotel by 8.15 so we are here well in advance of nine
and that's kind of the constant plan. you can basically plan on that. we'll try not to run over time
but I'm sure we are doing that already
here are the paople that will be talking with you.
Taniya, XXXX, Chris and Jorge in electrons if not in person
and then Kate is sitting over there
most of you've had a lot of communication with Kate
and you know me. so from Kate and from me anything we can do to help you just let us know