News and Events

The importance of the participation of Mozambique in GBIF was the topic for discussion in a workshop held in Maputo, co-organized by the Eduardo Mondlane University (Department of Biological Sciences) and the Portuguese Node of GBIF. About 40 participants from universities, natural history museums, research institutes and Mozambican NGOs also gained better understanding about the objectives of the GBIF network, its operation and the requirements and implementation process of a national node.

A new checklist resource was recently published by the Universidade dos Açores through GBIF for the Archipelago of Madeira, including Selvagens.

The Universidade dos Açores recently published the checklist entitles "A List of the Terrestrial and Marine Biota from the Azores", through GBIF. The checklist covers all of the species of the main terrestrial and marine biological groups existing in Azores, and is the first resource published by this institution, which was recently registered as a Portuguese GBIF publisher.

The Portuguese Node of GBIF will organize the 8th European GBIF Nodes Meeting. The event will take place between 19 and 21 April in Lisbon, at Instituto Superior de Agronomia, host institution of the Portuguese Node of GBIF since last November.

The GBIF publisher Sociedade Portuguesa de Botânica updated its dataset Flora-on with about 105 thousand new georreferenced records of plant occurrences in Portugal. The dataset now publishes more than a quarter million records through GBIF, covering all of Mainland Portugal. Records are submitted to the Flora-On by more than 80 botanists and expert naturalists.

 
The Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA), the School of Agriculture of the University of Lisbon, is the new hosting institution of the Portuguese Node of GBIF, since the end of September 2015. The change, done with the agreement of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, is a  result of the merging of the Tropical Research Institute (IICT) in the University of Lisbon.

Between the 20 and 23 of October, Madrid received a technical workshop hosted by the site Spanish GBIF Node on the Atlas of Living Australia platform. This was the second meeting scheduled under the project ERA-Net LAC PCA CoopBioPlat, which aims to promote the institutional cooperation based on biodiversity data portals at national level.

About 30 people from Angolan museums, universities and national environment, agriculture and fisheries agencies attended in Luanda to the workshop on Scientific Data Sharing about Biodiversity. The event was organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Angola with the collaboration of the Portuguese Node of GBIF and was held in the Talatona Convention Centre, the 10th of September, as a side event of the 4th National Conference on Science and Technology.