Workshop: Bases para a Conservação da Biodiversidade do Estado de São Paulo

Views of Arthur D. Chapman

Environmental Resources Information Network

GPO Box 787, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

Tel: (61) 2 6274 1066

Fax: (61) 2 6274 1333

Email: arthur@erin.gov.au

The views expressed herein are my personal views and do not reflect the views of either ERIN or the Australian Government.

I found the Workshop "Bases para a Conservação da Biodiversidade do Estado de São Paulo" extremely stimulating and class it as being highly successful. The enthusiasm of the participants in the workshop to work collaboratively toward a common outcome was quite impressive.

The documentation provided by the organisers for the workshop and the preliminary background work in getting participants prepared was professionally done and provided the background necessary for the workshop to proceed without having to spend too much time on unnecessary preliminaries in bring participants up to speed.

The invitation list seemed to be well thought out, however it may be necessary to consider bringing more of the user community in any future like workshops.

This is the third workshop that I have attended where a cross section of the biological disciplines were brought together, and all three I believe have been successful in exchanging ideas and methodologies between disciplines. This type of exchange can only benefit our attempts to advance information exchange and dissemination.

I was very impressed by some of the work already being done by the BDT group in integrating information, and will be looking closely at that for lessons that we in Australia may use.

Some Suggestions and Observations

• The workshop has generated a great deal of enthusiasm and momentum amongst participants. That needs to be built on and not let to dissipate. Too many similar exercises have been conducted in a number of countries and have not had adequate follow up. Once the initial momentum is lost, it is much harder to restart the process as participants get sceptical about the worth of putting in that effort only to see little to come of it.
• It is important to continue to focus on the big picture issues and weave the smaller picture issues into that framework. The workshop did a good job at that, but any follow up will need to extend that vision.
• The integration of data is a key to the success of the operation. Individual databases can be good for some purposes, but the true value for use in environmental decision making is their integration and that is where any follow-up workshops should concentrate.
• Any follow up needs to involve the users of the information that it is intended to generate. There needs to be full interaction between the providers of the information, the data analysts and data managers, and the end users to ensure that the data being collected and analysed is in a format that will provide the information required by users. This involvement of stakeholders also applies to the development of standards.
• The development of Metadata should be regarded as a priority to help identify what existing data exists, where and how they are stored and what are the various access constraints, etc.
• Users need to be consulted and involved prior to any developmental work on large integrating databases. These databases need to be developed with the end use in mind and not as mere data storage vessels.
• Data quality and validation need to be considered at an early stage and should definitely be considered at the design stage of any database development, or collection strategy.
• It soon becomes apparent that one cannot focus on everything, so priorities need to be set - e.g. on environments, particular species (i.e. endangered, keystone, etc.), "hot spots", etc. These need to be flexible to be able to take advantage of oportunistic data sets, etc.
• There is also an advantage in prioritising the databasing of taxonomic groups. This will lead to a complete coverage of one group at an early stage rather than lots of part collections from different data custodians. For example, in Australia we organised for all herbaria to database the genus Eucalyptus first, rather than the different herbaria database different genera from their own collections. In this way we rapidly had a consistent coverage for the genus Eucalyptus for the whole continent.
• At present there is interest from a number of large developed nation collection institutions in beginning to database their collections and are looking at priorities for that databasing. Developing countries that are embarking on a process such as that proposed at this workshop need to influence and educate those institutions as to their priorities. As most collections are stored taxonomically and not geographically, taxonomic groups that are of importance to developing countries need to identified and publicised. As priorities are developed for the State of São Paulo" you perhaps need to persuade Northern Hemisphere collecting institutions to make those groups their priorities as well.
• As existing information is databased, use that information to identify gaps in the information - not only geographically, but environmentally as well. In this way, future collecting activities can be prioritised to concentrate on filling those gaps. This can then be sold to funding bodies as a way of making better use of scarce resources.
• Long-term monitoring sites can be of value for monitoring change as well as providing a reference for comparison between sites. Thus the development of Long-term monitoring sites need to be considered and integrated into new collecting activities and strategies.
• Be careful not to get tied to proprietory, outdated or non-updateable technology for data storage and dissemination/publication. Dissemmination technologies are rapidly changing as evidenced by the World Wide Web, and any system must be able to take advantage of developments that may be of benefit in improving the dissemmination of information.
• As far as is possible, adapt existing standards (global, national, etc.) rather than develop new ones. Any modifications, or development of new standards should always be carried out in association with stakeholders.
• Wherever possible, use distributed systems. Data is best maintained at the source by the custodians and owners of the data. This distribution can sometimes operate with the data stored centrally with the custodians being able to maintain and update the information on line. Any successful system will adopt a range of ways of maintaining the data, but there is always a danger of being too centralised as data can quickly become out-dated and of little value.