News and Events

The biodiversity information and the role of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) was the main topic of a seminar held at the Instituto da Biodiversidade e Áreas Protegidas in Bissau, last July 14. The seminar was co-organised by IBAP and the Portuguese Node of GBIF. In this seminar, there were also presented IBAP's activities site devoted to the management of biodiversity information in protected areas, through databases and geographic information systems.

In the last two months there was the publication and updating of three sets of records by national institutions, whose data are already available through GBIF.

It is already on the 14th of July, that the Instituto de Biodiversidade e das Áreas Protegidas (IBAP) of Guiné-Bissau hosts, at its headquarters in Bissau, the seminar The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the availability of biodiversity data about Guinea-Bissau. The seminar is co-organized by the IBAP and the Portuguese GBIF Node, and runs under the GBIF_PALOP project to promote GBIF on African Portuguese-speaking countries.

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.