Report from the Pole-to-Pole MBON & GOOS & OBIS workshop 'Marine Biodiversity - from the Sea to the Cloud' The Pole to Pole Marine Biodiversity Observation Network of the Americas (P2P MBON) gathered researchers and managers from Canada to Patagonia and experts from other parts of the world, at the Centro de Biologia Marinha da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil (CEBIMar/USP) during the 2018 AmeriGEOSS Week (August 6-10, 2018).
The main objective of the workshop was to promote the convergence on strategies for biodiversity monitoring and conservation in rocky intertidal areas and sandy beaches.
This process continues to build the foundations of the P2P MBON network in the GEO context, in a partnership between various GEO elements (GEO BON/MBON, AmeriGEOSS, Blue Planet) and OBIS.
The P2P MBON workshop focused on capacity building and applied science for conservation and management of living resources.
The goal was to develop the capacity to sustain critical ecosystem services for communities in the region.
Instructional modules focused on four key areas: field data collection in rocky shore and sandy beach habitats using existing, standardized protocols; manipulation of tabular and spatial data for standardized data formats, such as Darwin Core; publish datasets to the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS, IOC) using established tools for data sharing; training on data science tools (R, Rmarkdown, Github) to mine data, conduct data discovery and analysis, and produce reproducible research documents with interactive visualizations on the web.
The effort included discussion of remote sensing observations, and strategies to develop indicators for Sustainable Development Goals and Aichi Biodiversity Targets.
During the workshop, the participants developed a sampling protocol for macroinvertebrate community in sandy beaches, performed a pilot sampling, identified the organisms and uploaded the curated data into the OBIS training IPT.
All the course materials are available at the Ocean Teacher Global Academy and in the project website.
For more information, contact Enrique Montes (emontesh-at-usf.edu) or Eduardo Klein (eklein-at-usb.ve)#J-18808-Ljbffr