Dear all,
At the GBIF Governing Board meeting in Kilkenny (October 2018) the work program and budget was approved. In the 2019 Budget GBIF will contribute 40k euros to help support the Living Atlases community.
Following on from this agreement, there was some discussion in Kilkenny about how best to allocate these funds. An opportunistic meeting was held with some members of the Living Atlases community who where present in Kilkenny. This included representatives from Spain, France, Portugal, Australia, Sweden, Brazil. That group came to the conclusion that the funds would be best put to use by supporting a “Living Atlas Coordinator” position.
Following on from the meeting, we created the following document (called “The Kilkenny Accord”) that attempts to outline scope and some details of this position:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14tyjEPaDpIo9B_8wvHDKbfMRLO81FviTsVQt9IT…
The proposal is to recruit a coordinator and expect this needs to be someone within the community. In addition, the majority of the countries present agreed to provide additional funds to support the role (5k euros per country).
We are aware that quite a few members of the Living Atlas community were not present at this meeting. At this stage, we’d like to ask the wider community if they agree with the proposal outlined.
Additionally, we would like to ask if there are more participants willing to make a financial pledge that would be used towards the coordinator, setting up the project management structures and/or workshops. The Living Atlas community aims to be inclusive, so any group may contribute regardless of their participation status in GBIF - e.g. an institution or a national center may contribute. An early indication of finances available in 2019 will be helpful to help plan activities.
Please feel free to respond to this mailing list, or to email directly.
Kind regards
Dave Martin
Atlas of Living Australia
david.martin(a)csiro.au
Dear Living Atlases-Community!
We, the Biodiversity Hub Austria, are happy to announce that work has
begun to implement the ALA infrastructure in Austria to build up a
national biodiversity database – the Biodiversity Atlas Austria. Some of
you may have already heard this or have already been contacted by us for
initial questions and help.
We would like to take this opportunity now to introduce us and the
project via the ALA mailing list. The set up of the Biodiversity Atlas
Austria is part of a bigger state government funded project building up
a national stakeholder network on biodiversity and ecosystem services
for Austria – the Biodiversity Network Austria
(www.biodiversityaustria.at, only in German at the moment).
Our Biodiversity Hub-Team consists of Gerald Steiner (project lead),
Andrea Höltl (project co-lead), Georg Neubauer (database programmer) and
me, Tanja Lumetsberger (research assistant database and network). We
form the coordination office for the biodiversity network and are
located at the Danube University Krems in Lower Austria, which is
located nearby Vienna.
We have just started with the implementation, so we can’t provide you
with any visual output at the moment but we will definitely message
again as soon as the Biodiversity Atlas Austria is online – which is
anticipated to be early next year. The web address will be
www.biodiversityatlas.at (not working at the moment).
I am sure a couple of questions will occur during the set up and it
would be great if we could get back to the Living Atlases-Community with
our questions (e.g. via the hip chat) but hopefully we can implement
most of it without asking you too much.
We are looking forward to be part of the Living Atlases-Community!
Best wishes from Austria
The Biodiversity Hub-Team
Gerald, Andrea, Georg, Tanja
____________________________________________________________
Tanja Lumetsberger, MSc
Research Assistant
Biodiversity Hub
Danube University Krems – University for Continuing Education
Faculty of Economics and Globalization
Department for Knowledge and Communication Management
Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Strasse 30, 3500 Krems/Donau
T +43 2732 893-2123
tanja.lumetsberger(a)donau-uni.ac.at
www.biodiversityaustria.at
