Are you an open data champion? The 2019 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge will award up to €34,000 in prizes to the most innovative entries that leverage biodiversity data and tools from the GBIF network to advance open science.
Between 23 January and 1 August, individuals and teams can prepare tools and techniques that improve the access, usefulness and quality of open biodiversity data and submit them to this open-ended incentive competition.
On behalf of the network of national Participants, the GBIF Secretariat is pleased to invite nominations for the 2019 Young Researchers Award.
This annual programme aims to foster innovative research and discovery in biodiversity informatics by graduate students whose master’s and doctoral studies rely on GBIF-mediated data.
We are pleased to alert you to the availability of a new draft report from the Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN). The document, Extending U.S. Biodiversity Collections to Address National Challenges, is the outcome of a workshop convened on 30 October and 1 November 2018 at Oak Spring Garden in Upperville, Virginia. That workshop was informed by prior BCoN workshops and reports, scientific literature, a community survey, and several community dialogues convened at scientific meetings during 2018. The workshop addressed the future deployment of data held in U.S. biodiversity collections for research, policy, and education.
BCoN invites public comment on this draft report. The comment period is open until 5:00 PM Eastern on 1 February 2019. Comments should be emailed to Dr. Barbara Thiers at bthiers@nybg.org.
To read the report and supporting materials, please visit https://bcon.aibs.org/2019/01/
Thank you for your contributions to this important effort.
Sincerely,
The BCoN Advisory Committee
The National Center for Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (iDigBio), centered at the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), is developing an integrated national infrastructure for digitization of biodiversity collections housed in U.S. institutions. The resource is providing access to information critical to scientific research and education, including that designed to understand biodiversity and societal consequences of global change and other environmental issues.
The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium is seeking to hire two paid interns as part of a multi-institutional NSF-funded Digitization TCN: Digitizing "Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful: Facilitating Research on Imperiled Plants with Extreme Morphologies."
Interns will assist with the barcoding, imaging, and data transcription of carnivorous, epiphytic, and succulent plant herbarium specimens in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at The New York Botanical Garden. Applicants should be biology/botany/museum majors or recent graduates, have a desire to work in a museum setting, and be team and detail oriented.
Applications due by January 18th.
Dr. Barbara M. Thiers
Vice President
Patricia K. Holmgren Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium
Curator of Bryophytes
Editor, Index Herbariorum
President, Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
New York Botanical Garden
Bronx, NY 10458-5126
bthiers@nybg.org
718-817-8626
University of Florida plant biologist Pamela Soltis has been appointed to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee investigating the value and future of biological collections.
University of Cincinnati biologist Eric Tepe opened a folder on his desk to reveal a flower that was plucked on a spring day in 1884.
“This is running buffalo clover. It does really well when there’s some disturbance in the soil. So in bison tracks, it would have been abundant,” Tepe said.
by Deborah Paul (iDigBio), Katherine LeVan (NEON), and Kevin Love (iDigBio)
Benefits of Togetherness.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Some fungi are smelly and coated in mucus. Others have gills that glow in the dark. Some are delicious; others, poisonous. Some spur euphoria when ingested. Some produce antibiotics.
