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