People have a big resistance to using cash in their budget. We’ve become so accustomed to using debit and credit cards that using cash is like a novelty. I wanted to address a couple of the concerns people have and why they don’t outweigh the huge benefits of using cash. Objection #1: It’s Inconvenient One […]

The post Two Common Objections To Using A Cash Budget first appeared on Getting Finances Done.

Noman Ali celebrates after taking the wicket at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi, on October 26, 2024. — AFP

KARACHI: Pakistan spinner Noman Ali has been named the ICC Men’s Player of the Month for October 2024, edging out South African pacer Kagiso...

TomTom Reaches Mapping Milestone: 1.5 Billion Updates in a Single Month

Children and teenagers playing sports overall has increased even as participation among boys has dropped off, according to an annual study released Wednesday.

The Christian Finances pages offer Biblical principles for employment, budget, credit, debt, savings, investment and giving. The true meaning of stewardship-employment, debt, investment, budget, giving.

Horse racing history of all kinds is being made Saturday in the final Triple Crown race of the year.

Election Day is finally here, the polls are open and the news media are in frantic mode. There's a little serenity around, though. Millions of Americans already have cast their votes early by mail or in person -- and likely glad that they did.

The iconic Notre Dame Cathedral is ringing its bells once more, five years after a devastating fire nearly destroyed the Paris landmark.

Titanium Monthly Membershp

Price: $1,296.00

Description: To receive Gold, Gold Plus, Diamond, or Titanium membership you must first apply and be accepted to the program and then purchase the 'Home Study System' for 3 payments of $499 USD (30 days apart). With your Home Study System you receive 3 free months of Gold Membership. *Do not purchase any MASS products without first applying to become a member at:?https://www.musicacademysuccess.com/apply/
If you purchase memberships without having your application approved, you will not be allowed to join the program.

Required For Titanium Membership: Must gross at least $25,000 USD per month to apply.

?

• All the benefits of Gold AND Gold Plus AND Diamond membership (listed below) PLUS:
• Group Zoom video coaching with Marty Fort every?3 weeks discussing high level music academy?concepts and business ventures outside of the?music academy industry. Seven-figure sessions for seven-figure (& aspiring seven-figure) thinkers!
• Block out two ZIP CODES as long as you’re a Titanium member.?
• One free seat at the annual Advanced Academy (sometimes as presenter, sometimes as auditor). ?No need to participate in contests or pay full rate. Bring guest for discounted rate of 4 payments of $199, each 30 days apart.
• Elite Closed / Private Titanium Facebook Group with DIRECT answers to some questions from Marty (not his staff).
• Two 911 Fifteen minute calls with Marty every year.

MASS Diamond Monthly Membership

Price: $399.00

Description: To receive Gold, Gold Plus, Diamond, or Titanium membership you must first apply and be accepted to the program and then purchase the 'Home Study System' for 3 payments of $499 USD (30 days apart). With your Home Study System you receive 3 free months of Gold Membership. *Do not purchase any MASS products without first applying to become a member at:?https://www.musicacademysuccess.com/apply/
If you purchase memberships without having your application approved, you will not be allowed to join the program.

Diamond monthly coaching members receive:

DIAMOND MEMBERSHIP (Includes all Gold and Gold Plus level benefits also, listed below)

A. Live monthly Gold and bi-monthly Gold Plus member group coaching call where you can ask me questions about your business.

B. Audio archive of our monthly Q&A calls

C. CDs of the call of the month.

D. The MASS Resource Directory. Full of important info for Academy owners.

E. Special MASS members only monthly newsletter and special reports mailed to your home.

F. Chance to compete in the MASS School of the Year contest and win $1,000 in cash and a full day consultation visit with Marty Fort.

G. Members only Facebook page.

H.?Unlimited MP3 downloads of the Gold and Gold Plus audio archive, including Office Staff Training calls.

I. Block out seven of your most hated competitors.

J. Get an even more reduced rate for annual conference registrations.

K.? Monthly Office Staff Training call where you and your staff can ask questions of Marty Fort and his office staff.

L.? One monthly semi-private (2-3 schools) coaching call with Marty Fort to get personalized coaching for your school.

M.? Closed Diamond Facebook page just for Diamond members to discuss advanced topics.

N.? Wholesale printing and shipping pricing of the MASS manuals as they are updated for as long as you are a current member.

The MASS Gold, Gold +, Diamond & Titanium membership fees are non refundable.

Gold Plus Monthly Membership

Price: $198.00

Description: To receive Gold, Gold Plus, Diamond, or Titanium membership you must first apply and be accepted to the program and then purchase the 'Home Study System' for 3 payments of $499 USD (30 days apart). With your Home Study System you receive 3 free months of Gold Membership. *Do not purchase any MASS products without first applying to become a member at:?https://www.musicacademysuccess.com/apply/
If you purchase memberships without having your application approved, you will not be allowed to join the program.

Gold + monthly coaching members receive:

GOLD + MEMBERSHIP (Includes all Gold level benefits also, listed below)

A. Live monthly Gold and bi-monthly Gold Plus member group coaching call where you can ask me questions about your business.

B. Audio archive of our monthly Q&A calls

C. CDs of the call of the month.

D. The MASS Resource Directory. Full of important info for Academy owners.

E. Special MASS members only monthly newsletter and special reports mailed to your home.

F. Chance to compete in the MASS School of the Year contest and win $1,000 in cash and a full day consultation visit with Marty Fort.

G. Members only Facebook page.

H.?Unlimited MP3 downloads of the Gold and Gold Plus audio archive, including Office Staff Training calls.

I. Block out four of your most hated competitors.

J. Get a reduced rate for annual conference registrations.

K.? Monthly Office Staff Training call where you and your staff can ask questions of Marty Fort and his office staff.

L.??Wholesale printing and shipping pricing of the MASS manuals as they are updated for as long as you are a current member.

The MASS Gold, Gold +, Diamond & Titanium membership fees are non refundable.

Gold Monthly Membership

Price: $99.00

To receive Gold, Gold +, Diamond, or Titanium membership you must first apply and be accepted to the program and then purchase the 'Home Study System' for 3 payments of $499 USD (30 days apart). With your Home Study System you receive 3 free months of Gold Membership. *Do not purchase any MASS products without first applying to become a member at:?https://www.musicacademysuccess.com/apply/
If you purchase memberships without having your application approved, you will not be allowed to join the program.

Gold monthly coaching members receive:

GOLD MEMBERSHIP

A. Live monthly Gold, Gold Plus, Diamond and Titanium member call where you can ask me questions about your business.

B. Audio archive of our monthly Q&A calls

C. CDs of the call of the month.

D. The MASS resource directory. Full of important info for Academy owners.

E. Special MASS members only monthly newsletter and special reports mailed to your home.

F. Chance to compete in the MASS School of the Year contest and win $1,000 in cash and a full day consultation visit with Marty Fort.

G. Members only Facebook page where you can network with fellow members in a safe, non-selling environment.

H.??Wholesale printing and shipping pricing of the MASS manuals as they are updated for as long as you are a current member.

The MASS Gold, Gold +, Diamond & Titanium membership fees are non refundable.

Ending the controversy over who the real Christians are...at least that's my prayer. Get past the doctrines and politics and to the heart of faith.

Musician Art Garfunkel recently reunited with on-again/off-again musical partner Paul Simon, looking to reconcile their differences and make amends.

Parents of high schoolers are now the most powerful force in higher education.

Free college tuition. New cars. Complimentary passes to government gyms. And cold, hard cash. Militaries all over the world are at war right now. And they're getting creative with pay and benefits to lure in potential recruits and to keep battle-hardened veterans in their uniforms for another round.

Last week, a majority of Americans voted for common sense. It was a repudiation of the outrageous - a call for the restoration of policies that serve families not the special interests of politicians.

Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with a sophisticated combination of missiles and drones for the first time in 73 days on Wednesday, authorities reported, as the Pentagon said most of the North Korean troops sent to help Moscow's war effort are fighting to drive Ukraine's army off Russian soil in the Kursk border region.

San Francisco third baseman Matt Chapman won his fifth Gold Glove and Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. was among 14 first-time winners of baseball's most famous fielding honor.

Cleveland has won its first 12 games and is off to the best start in the league. There are 10 teams in the Western Conference with winning records. And somehow, only two teams in the Eastern Conference have winning records.

Three NASA astronauts whose prolonged space station mission ended with a trip to the hospital last month declined to say Friday which one of them was sick.

Three NASA astronauts whose prolonged space station mission ended with a trip to the hospital last month declined to say Friday which one of them was sick.

One of 43 monkeys bred for medical research that escaped a compound in South Carolina has been recovered unharmed, officials said Saturday.

Worsening air pollution sickened an estimated 1.8 million people in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province in the past month, health officials said Tuesday, as schools across the province were ordered to close for five days to protect children's health.

Two former Olympic champions are in the race to be the next IOC president. So is a prince of a Middle East kingdom and the son of a former president. The global leaders of cycling, gymnastics and skiing also are in play.

Monographs are fundamental for progress in systematic  botany. They are the vehicles for circumscribing and naming taxa, determining distributions and ecology,  assessing  relationships for formal classification, and interpreting long-term  and short-term  dimensions of the evolutionary process. Despite their importance, fewer monographs are now being prepared by the newer generation  of systematic  botanists, who are understandably involved principally with DNA data and analysis, especially for answering  phylogenetic, biogeographic, and population  genetic questions.  As monographs provide  hypotheses regarding species  boundaries and plant relationships, new insights  in many plant groups  are urgently  needed.  Increasing  pressures  on biodiversity, especially in tropical and developing regions of the world, emphasize this point. The results from a workshop (with 21 participants) reaffirm  the central role that monographs play in systematic  botany. But, rather than advocating abbreviated models  for monographic products,  we recommend a full presentation of relevant  information. Electronic  publication offers numerous  means of illustration of taxa, habitats, characters, and statistical and phylogenetic analyses, which previously  would have been prohibitively costly. Open Access and semantically enhanced  linked electronic  publications provide instant access to content from anywhere  in the world, and at the same time link this content to all underlying data and digital resources  used in the work.  Resources  in support  of monography, especially  databases  and widely  and easily  accessible  digital  literature and specimens, are now more powerful  than ever before, but interfacing and interoperability of databases  are much needed. Priorities  for new resources  to be developed  include an index of type collections and an online global chromosome database. Funding  for sabbaticals for monographers to work uninterrupted on major projects  is strongly  encouraged. We recommend that doctoral  students  be assigned  smaller  genera,  or natural  portions  of larger  ones (subgenera, sections,  etc.), to gain the necessary expertise for producing a monograph, including training in a broad array of data collection (e.g., morphology, anatomy, palynology, cytogenetics, DNA techniques, ecology, biogeography), data analysis (e.g., statistics,  phylogenetics, models), and nomenclature. Training programs, supported by institutes, associations, and agencies, provide means for passing on procedures and perspectives of challenging botanical  monography to the next generation  of young systematists.

The Brazilian initiative PPBio (The Program for Research on Biodiversity) launches a new book based on over a decade of experience in implementing the biodiversity monitoring system RAPELD in the Brazilian Amazon. Richly illustrated and written in simple language, the book "Biodiversity and Integrated Environmental Monitoring" addresses the issues that led to the system development, covering topics such as the spatial organization and representation of biological diversity, environmental monitoring, and data management.

Monitoring of biodiversity is not merely an academic endeavor. Although scientific aspects such as representation of biodiversity and biodiversity data integration, management and preservation are of a great importance, it is also essential to think about the political context in which decisions will be made and how to incorporate political stakeholders and decision makers.

"As this important book makes clear questions about biodiversity are far from purely scientific. Biodiversity matters. Our needs to assess it embed in a complex of questions posed by managers, policy makers and those who live in or otherwise benefit from biodiversity.",  explains Dr Stuart L. Pimm in the preface of the book. "So how do we ensure that data collected now will be useful for purposes we cannot yet imagine at some unexpected time in the future? Or provide comparison to some other place that we might survey some day?"

Those and many more questions regarding biodiversity data management and policy involvement are discussed in the new book "Biodiversity and Integrated Environmental Monitoring".

Issue 72 of the CBD Technical Series is now out focusing on "EARTH OBSERVATION FOR BIODIVERSITY MONITORING : A review of current approaches and future opportunities for tracking progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets". The issue shows how earth observation technologies can and should fit into systems for biodiversity monitoring, as well as demonstrates how these approaches could further improve relevant indicators for the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. It illustrates a clear track from observations done by remote sensing platforms through Essential Biodiversity Variables to biodiversity indicators and ultimately to the assessment of progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and ultimately in support of evidence-based decision making. EU BON is also featured in this report.

The goal of the CBD Technical Series is to contribute to the dissemination of up-to-date and accurate information on selected topics that are important for the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the equitable sharing of its benefits. A large and growing body of evidence has clearly established the need to disseminate synthesis publications relevant to CBD objectives and selected reports presented at CBD meetings.

The CBD Technical Series is intended to:

• Foster scientific and technical cooperation;
• Improve communication between the Convention and the scientific community;
• Increase awareness of current biodiversity-related problems and concerns; and
• Facilitate widespread and effective use of the growing body of scientific and technical information on conserving and using biological diversity.

The full report is available here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.  ESA is an international organisation with 20 Member States.

How is EU BON connected to space research? As a speaker at the EU BON General Meeting, which took place on Crete between 30 March - 3 April 2014, Marc Paganini of the European Space Agency explains the collaboration between ESA and GEO BON, and how EU BON is involved.

In the following interview he continues the topic:

Marc Paganini (left) and Dirk Schmeller (right) at the EU BON General Meeting 2014

1) For most of the general public space and biodiversity research hardly have anything to do with each other, can you explain how the European Space Agency (ESA) and the idea of remote sensing communities make these two meet?

It is widely recognized that in-situ observations available on biological diversity are very scarce for most of the Earth’s ecosystems and are often insufficient for determining precisely the global status and trends of biodiversity worldwide. In most cases, satellite Earth Observations do not provide a direct measurement of biodiversity but, if properly used with ground collection of biodiversity data and species and habitat modeling, remote sensing can become an important and essential component of biodiversity monitoring systems. There are multiple cases where remote sensing is often the only instrument that can offer large scale monitoring, as for example in highly variable ecosystems such as wetlands or in remote areas that can hardly be monitored by field campaigns.

The recent and future evolution of the portfolio of EO satellites offers huge potential for increasing the use of EO products into biodiversity monitoring systems. The lack of data continuity has always been a barrier for the biodiversity community to invest in EO technology.  A commitment from Space Agencies to provide sustained observations on the long term is a strong incentive for the biodiversity community to invest in Space. The Sentinel series of the European Copernicus program, together with the freely available data from other space agencies such as the Landsat family of the US Geological Survey, will bring unprecedented long-term continuity of observations for the biodiversity community. In that context, free and open data policy to taxpayer-funded satellite remote sensing imagery is becoming a "de facto" standard amongst Space Agencies and a unique opportunity for the biodiversity community to use widely EO products to monitor biodiversity trends.

2) How is the ESA involved with the aims of EU BON, where do the two initiatives intersect?

ESA and many other Space Agencies are becoming more and more committed in helping the biodiversity community at large, in improving their capacity to use remote sensing data for monitoring biodiversity trends.

First there is a coordinated action from all Space Agencies through the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and its involvement in the Group of Earth Observation (GEO). The GEO is a voluntary partnership of governments and international organizations who engaged jointly in developing a comprehensive, coordinated and sustained system of observations of the Earth with the ultimate objective to enhance scientifically-sound decision making. Biodiversity is one of the primary societal benefit areas of GEO and is addressed by the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). CEOS is actively involved in GEO BON, principally through the participation to its steering committee of the European, US and German Space Agencies, namely ESA, NASA and DLR. Since EU BON is the principal European contribution to GEO BON, and has, amongst its objectives, the aim to integrate biodiversity data from ground observations to remote sensing information, ESA is directly concerned by the EU BON development in using remote sensing for terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms.

Second, ESA has its own EO application development programs, and funds a wide range of Research & Development projects for biodiversity and ecosystem services. In that context, ESA has established close relationships with the European Environment Agency (EEA) but also with the secretariats and scientific bodies of major Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA) such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Ramsar Convention on wetlands. The findings of the ESA-funded EO projects on biodiversity and ecosystem services are highly relevant to EU BON. It is therefore expected that the ESA and EU BON activities in relation to the use of RS for biodiversity monitoring will offer some convergence of evidence showcases for the whole biodiversity community.

3) How do you see the future of collaboration with EU BON?

The high potential for satellite Earth Observations to support biodiversity monitoring is growing but is yet to be fully realised. The recent efforts of GEO BON, supported by the GEO Plenary and the CBD Conference of the Parties, to define a set of minimum essential observational requirements to monitor biodiversity trends will give considerable impetus for space agencies and for the remote sensing community to focus their work on a small set of well defined EO products that will serve the needs of the biodiversity community at large. In that context ESA is firmly engaged in supporting the development of these emerging Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). EU BON together with ESA can be pioneers in the early development and demonstration.

The GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) develops and deploys new process and infrastructure components for the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and the broader GEOSS architecture.

To present the GCI an "Introduction to the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI)" virtual workshop will be held today 21 May 2013 at 14:00 UTC.

Virtual meeting details: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/628333311

A new aticle published in Ecology Letters  looks into the indirect interactions among tropical tree species through shared rodent seed predators. The reasearch is part of the work of EU BON postdoc Carol X. Garzon-Lopez.

Abstract: The coexistence of numerous tree species in tropical forests is commonly explained by negative dependence of recruitment on the conspecific seed and tree density due to specialist natural enemies that attack seeds and seedlings (‘Janzen–Connell’ effects). Less known is whether guilds of shared seed predators can induce a negative dependence of recruitment on the density of different species of the same plant functional group. We studied 54 plots in tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, with contrasting mature tree densities of three coexisting large seeded tree species with shared seed predators. Levels of seed predation were far better explained by incorporating seed densities of all three focal species than by conspecific seed density alone. Both positive and negative density dependencies were observed for different species combinations. Thus, indirect interactions via shared seed predators can either promote or reduce the coexistence of different plant functional groups in tropical forest.

Carol X. Garzon-Lopez et. al. (2015) Indirect interactions among tropical tree species through shared rodent seed predators: a novel mechanism of tree species coexistence. Ecology Letters. doi: 10.1111/ele.12452

A new issue in Science for Environment Policy "Monitoring Nature: Research Developments" provides a flavour of recent work by scientists in the area of biodiversity monitoring to highlight both up-to-date approaches to conservation and evaluation, and how long-term monitoring data could be used more effectively in management and policy decisions.

This Issue also includes topics such as monitoring to environmental policy, remote sensing, citizen science, DNA barcoding and more.

Find this issue on the SEP website here, or go straight to download.

A new EU BON acknowledging special issue "Earth Observation for Ecosystems Monitoring in Space and Time: A Special Issue in Remote Sensing" published in the open access journal Remote Sensing provides a collection of  important researchers in the field, as well as the most challenging aspects of the application of remote sensing to study ecosystems. 

The 2016 GEO BON Open Science Conference: "Biodiversity and ecosystem Services Monitoring for the 2020 Targets and beyond. Building on observations for user needs" will take place from 4 to 9 July 2016 in Leipzig, Germany. 

Biodiversity Science is facing enormous challenges as the pressures upon the earth’s biotic systems are rapidly intensifying and we are unlikely to reach the CBD 2020 Aichi Targets. But how far or close are we to reach the targets? The GEO BON Open Science Conference on "Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Monitoring for the 2020 Targets and beyond" will assess this question. The conference is open to the wide scientific public and is sponsored and co-organized by iDiv, UFZ, SASCAL (others to come).

For more information please visit: http://conf2016.geobon.org

How can we monitor Europe-wide farmland biodiversity so that it makes sense to farmers, is ecologically credible and scientifically sound and can be implemented for a reasonable price? Two new studies answer these questions.

First, stakeholders were asked, which indicators provided best "value for money" for their purpose. Habitat, plant species and farm management indicators ranked highest. Wild bees, earthworms and spiders as important providers of ecosystem services came next. Together they form a minimum set of indicators which provides non-redundant information and which can make dominant changes in farmland biodiversity visible.

Researchers from the FP7 funded EU projects "Biodiversity Indicators for European Farming Systems (BioBio)" and "Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON)", then developed cost estimates for nine monitoring scenarios and the authors conclude that a continent-wide farmland biodiversity monitoring scheme would require only a modest share of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget (2014-2020).

Cost assessments showed that the farmland biodiversity monitoring scenarios require 0·01% - 0·74% of the total CAP budget and 0·04% - 2·48% of the CAP budget specifically allocated to environmental targets. With 30% of the CAP devoted to environmental targets (more than 120 billion EURO), investing in a monitoring process seems a logical choice given these results. The researchers provide a framework for individual countries to start farmland biodiversity monitoring, building towards a coherent European picture.

The studies were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology and the Journal of Environmental Management.

"Despite scientific proof that monitoring increases the (cost) efficiency of policy measures, monitoring rarely gets included in policy programme budgets. We identified that the cost are not as high as feared. To further facilitate implementation, the study provides stepping stones to build a European monitoring scheme, offering a choice in indicators and using regions as a unit of trend analysis," explains Dr. Ilse Geijzendorffer, the lead author of the Journal of Applied Ecology paper.

Butterfly monitoring at local, national, regional, and global levels is the topic of the first of the GEO BON Technical Series reports produced to provide stakeholders with practical guidance for biodiversity conservation.

The report is jointly produced by GEO BON, EU BON, UNEP-WCMC, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Dutch Butterfly Conservation, as a follow up of a joint workshop, which took place in December 2014, to catalyse the process for the development of global butterfly monitoring guidelines and the creation of a new specialist butterfly monitoring group.

The report titled "Guidelines for Standardised Global Butterfly Monitoring" provides a suite of standard field protocols that can measure butterfly population change over various spatial and temporal scales, and that can be applied in any part of the world.

The importance of butterfly monitoring programmes lies in the fact that they provide information about population trends and changes that can be then used as indicators of biodiversity and environmental change outside of the butterfly context.

The guidelines are intended for scheme coordinators, i.e. people wishing to establish butterfly monitoring in any part of the world. The guidelines explain how to set up butterfly monitoring that can provide consistent and comparable results between sites and between years, consistent with international standards.

The ambition behind this new publication is that butterfly populations around the world are well monitored, thereby providing vital information on how these insect populations and other parts of biodiversity are changing. This information is important for feeding into local, national, regional, and global decision-making to help reduce biodiversity loss as well as raising awareness of butterflies and biodiversity in general.

Original Source:

Van Swaay, C., Regan, E., Ling, M., Bozhinovska, E., Fernandez, M., Marini-Filho, O.J., Huertas, B., Phon, C.-K., Kőrösi, A., Meerman, J., Pe’er, G., Uehara-Prado, M., Sáfián, S., Sam, L., Shuey, J., Taron, D., Terblanche, R., and Underhill, L. (2015). Guidelines for Standardised Global Butterfly Monitoring. Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, Leipzig, Germany. GEO BON Technical Series 1, 32pp.

A recently completed benchmark survey of common plants provides a comprehensive dataset of vascular plant diversity and abundance in South Northumberland and Durham, contributing an additional 35,000 observations to the 200,000 observations collected by local recorders since the turn of the millennium.

Apart from contributing an updated inventory of vascular plant diversity, the survey is intended to be used as a reference point with which to identify change in the countryside and study the drivers of biodiversity change in the North-east of England.

Changes in the abundance of rare species have little impact on other species, but change in the abundance of common species can have cascading effects on whole ecosystems. The new survey provides a solid foundation that can be used to qualify the abundance of common species and compare against previous and future studies.

The distribution of heather predicted from the common plant survey data. This is one of the region's most characteristic species and one that many other organisms rely upon for food and cover.

The survey was part of the North-East Common Plants Survey Project, conducted over four years and required volunteers to go to various places. Some surveyed post-industrial brown-field sites, while others walked for miles across bleak moorland to reach sites high in the hills. Although these moors are arguably wilder and natural, the industrial wastelands turn out to be far more biodiverse.

Botanical surveying continues in the region despite the end of the project. Volunteers continue to monitor rare plants in the region and are currently working towards the next atlas of Britain and Ireland, coordinated by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.

This survey is also among the first one to make use of the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) functionality, jointly developed by EU BON and GBIF, that allows the easy export and exposure of datasets to maximize their discoverability and reuse. The survey was published in the Biodiversity Data Journal, providing easy and streamlined publication of GBIF data via a variety of newly introduced plugins.

Original Source:

Groom Q, Durkin J, O'Reilly J, Mclay A, Richards A, Angel J, Horsley A, Rogers M, Young G (2015) A benchmark survey of the common plants of South Northumberland and Durham, United Kingdom. Biodiversity Data Journal 3: e7318. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.3.e7318

The Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) at the University of Twente has recently launched an investment programme to strengthen its international academic fields. For 11 pioneering-multidisciplinairy projects a PhD-position is made available, three of them already are filled in. The Department of Natural Resources (NRS) specialises in advanced spatial and temporal analysis and technique development for the environment as well as sustainable agriculture.

Job Description: 

For more information visit the official job offer.

Open access to biodiversity is key for addressing pertinent ecological issues such as biodiversity loss and impacts of climate change. On 22 & 23 March 2016, experts from EU BON met with scientists, policy makers and practitioners from across Europe to discuss issues of biodiversity data sharing, curation and publishing.

The workshop, which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, introduced participants to key concepts, demonstration and practical exercise in biodiversity data sharing using the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT). Practical training sessions led by Larissa Smirnova from the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium) and Kyle Braak from GBIF demonstrated the integration and management of datasets in GBIF. A step-by-step demo and practical session on how to publish a data was also featured in the workshop.

Participants at the EU BON data sharing & data publishing workshop in Sofia; Credit: Pensoft

Special attention was paid to innovative data publishing practices in a session led by the local hosts Pensoft Publishers who introduced their ARPHA publishing platform, as well as its new journal Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO), which publishes unconventional output types across the research cycle, including data and software descriptions, workflows, methods and many more.

PlutoF demonstrated its citizen science gateway and  demonstrated how the citizen science data can be managed using the CS module. Plazi also presented their GoldenGate Imagine tool, optimized for marking up, enhancing, and extracting text and data from PDF files.

    
Sessions at the at the EU BON data sharing & data publishing workshop in Sofia; Credit: Pensoft

The importance of measuring species diversity as an indicator of ecosystem health has been long recognized and it seems that satellite remote sensing (SRS) has proven to be one of the most cost-effective approaches to identify biodiversity hotspots and predict changes in species composition. What is the real potential of SRS and what are the pitfalls that need to be avoided to achieve the full potential of this method is the topic of a new research, published in the journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation.

The new study, supported by the FP7 funded EU project EU BON takes the assessment of diversity in plant communities as a case study. Showing the difficulties to achieve high results by relying only on field data, the paper discusses the advantages of SRS methods.

"In contrast to field-based methods, SRS allows for complete spatial coverages of the Earth's surface under study over a short period of time. Furthermore, it provides repeated measures, thus making it possible to study temporal changes in biodiversity," explains Dr. D. Rocchini from Fondazione Edmund Mach, lead author and WP deputy leader / task leader in EU BON. "In our research we provide a concise review of the potential of satellites to help track changes in plant species diversity, and provide, for the first time, an overview of the potential pitfalls associated with the misuse of satellite imagery to predict species diversity. "

Traditionally, assessment of biodiversity at local and regional scales relies on the one hand on local diversity, or the so called alpha-diversity, and on the other, on species turnover, or beta-diversity. Only in combination of these two measures can lead to an estimate of the whole diversity of an area.

While the assessment of alpha-diversity is relatively straightforward, calculation of beta-diversity could prove to be quite challenging. This is where increased collaboration between the remote sensing and biodiversity communities is needed in order to properly address future challenges and developments.

The new research shown the high potential of remote sensing in biodiversity studies while also identifying the challenges underpinning the development of this interdisciplinary field of research.

"Further sensitivity studies on environmental parameters derived from remote sensing for biodiversity mapping need to be undertaken to understand the pitfalls and impacts of different data collection processes and models. Such information, however, is crucial for a continuous global biodiversity analysis and an improved understanding of our current global challenges."concludes Dr. Rocchini.

Original Source:

Rocchini, D., Boyd, D. S., Féret, J.-B., Foody, G. M., He, K. S., Lausch, A., Nagendra, H., Wegmann, M., Pettorelli, N. (2016), Satellite remote sensing to monitor species diversity: potential and pitfalls. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, 2: 25-36. doi: 10.1002/rse2.9

Set to compile the largest biodiversity data collection for Europe to date, the EU-funded FP7 project Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON) has now launched the beta-version of its European Biodiversity Portal.

Despite being a beta version, this release already addresses the main aim to offer a unique service for analysing and understanding biodiversity change in Europe. For instance, users can explore how relative abundance of species (within a larger group) changes over time by using big data mediated by GBIF. There is also a spatial browser for locating datasets in any part of the world, which may be usable for computing the EBVs for species populations.

Additionally, an online analytical data processing (OLAP) toolbox has been included in this release. Based on GEOSS technology, the new portal lets users harvest and simultaneously access data from several directories, including GBIF, LTER, EuMon (coming), PESI, and GEOSS sources.

Started in 2012, the five-year project EU BON has been working towards building this new European Biodiversity Portal where scattered and various information and tools are collected, highlighted and widely shared for future research.

The service will provide all interested parties with a professional database platform with a large amount of implications. For example, coordinators can receive information about related monitoring programs in different countries. Initiatives could integrate their data and compare the trends and status across different countries and regions.

"The ultimate goal of EU BON is to build a comprehensive European Biodiversity Portal that will then feed into a Global Portal currently developed by GEO BON. This initiative will provide a completely new holistic way for analyzing global trends and processes.", concludes Dr. Hannu Saarenmaa, University of Eastern Finland and Work Package leader in EU BON.

We invite everyone to test the new portal and send us their feedback and suggestions for improvements via our Feedback Form.

EU projects EuMon and EU BON call out to monitoring programs to share data and expertise for building the European Biodiversity Portal.

Combining forces, two large scale EU projects, EuMon and EU BON, are set to compile the largest data collection on biodiversity monitoring activities in Europe to date. Using existing biodiversity data and metadata collected by the two projects, the initiative is a stepping stone in completing a comprehensive European Biodiversity Portal. The projects now call out to monitoring programs across the Old Continent and beyond, to join in, provide information about their schemes and share their expertise for the cause.

For its life span between 2004 and 2008 the project EU-wide monitoring methods and systems of surveillance for species and habitats of Community interest (EuMon) created Europe's most comprehensive metadata catalogue of biodiversity monitoring activities.

Started in 2012, the five-year project Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network(EU BON) has been working towards building a new European Biodiversity Portal where this information is collected, highlighted and widely shared for future research and applied biodiversity conservation. The beta version is now all set up and available to test here.

To answer knowledge gaps since the project has ended in 2008, the original EuMon monitoring meta database is being further expanded with new information on data availability and access, as well as with new remote sensing data. Previously underrepresented, the marine realm is now also included in the EuMon collection.

"Monitoring data has received a central stage in recent years, a process largely facilitated by the instalment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). However, while knowledge about monitoring efforts is important, we still miss a large variety of available programs and biodiversity data", explains EuMon's Project Leader Prof. Dr. Klaus Henle, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ.

"We, therefore, currently aim to increase and update the number of monitoring programs in the EuMon catalogue, as the catalogue still covers less than half of all existing programs in Europe", adds EuMon Project Coordinator, Dirk Schmeller, UFZ.

In a joint initiative EuMon and EU BON are now looking to create the opportunity for monitoring program coordinators to publish their data by using the data publishing service of the EU BON portal (data embargos also possible).

The service will provide all interested parties with a professional database platform with a large amount of implications. For example, coordinators can receive information about related monitoring programs in different countries. Initiatives could integrate their data and compare the trends and status across different countries and regions. Volunteers can find contacts about schemes in their regions they may consider to join.

Using the data publishing service of EU BON will also facilitate data sharing with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

"The ultimate goal of EU BON is to build a comprehensive European Biodiversity Portal that will then feed into a Global Portal currently developed by GEO BON. This initiative will provide a completely new holistic way for analyzing global trends and processes. We invite projects from across Europe to publish their datasets via the European Biodiversity Portal and become a part of this one-of-a-kind initiative", concludes Dr. Hannu Saarenmaa, University of Eastern Finland and Work Package leader in EU BON.

How to take part:

To access the EuMon database, please visit http://eumon.ckff.si/biomat. For sharing information about your monitoring program, please register here. You will then be able to provide metadata about your scheme via a simple online questionnaire. Answering the full set of questions is desirable, but not compulsory.

A new editorial, published in the Journal of Apllied Ecology looks at modelling and monitoring as methods for adaptive biodiversity management in the 21st century.

Abstract: 

With increasing threats on biodiversity, informed conservation decisions need to be based on currently observed and future predicted trends of biodiversity (Pereira, Navarro & Martins 2012; Guisan et al. 2013). In this regard, two essential components supporting informed biodiversity conservation decisions are good monitoring data to assess recent and ongoing trends (Collen et al. 2013; Pereira et al. 2013) and robust models to anticipate possible future trends (Pereira et al. 2010a; Akc
akaya et al. 2016). Models benefit from robust monitoring data sets, that is repeated observations of biodiversity, as they need data to be fitted or validated, but models can also help assess data representativeness (e.g. by highlighting any bias), support proper data collection (e.g. covering the relevant gradients) or be used to make more effective use of biodiversity observations (Guisan et al. 2006, 2013; Ferrier 2011).

Read more in the open access paper.

www.fishbase.ca and ​www.sealifebase.ca have been updated.

A recent story, featured on CORDIS News, focuses on EU BON and its achievements. Based on a recent project's publication in ‘Nature – Scientific Reports’ and information from the project, the new item discusses important project outcomes, including the European Biodiversity Portal, and their contribution to drawing a more accurate picture of current biodiversity to aid efforts for sustainable governance of natural resources.

Here is a snippet from the news feature on CORDIS: 

A recent article published in the journal ‘Scientific Reports’ states, ‘Monitoring schemes provide an important source of information on biodiversity change, guiding further research, conservation assessment and planning.’ The article cites The European Biodiversity Portal, designed and implemented by the EU-funded EU BON project that offers researchers, policy-makers, and others interested in biodiversity, easy access to insights on trends and modelling techniques.

The project worked on the establishment and adoption of new data standards, the development of tools to enable collaborative research and the encouragement of citizen-scientists. As a result, EU BON, by building the European Biodiversity Observation Network, has created advanced techniques for data analysis along with new approaches for modelling and strategies for future biodiversity monitoring.

Read the full publication here.

Biodiversity data are sparse, biased and collected at many resolutions. So techniques are needed to combine these data and provide some clarity. This is where downscaling comes in. Downscaling predicts the occupancy of a species in a given area. That is, the number of grid squares a species is predicted to occupy in a standard grid of equally sized squares. Downscaling uses the intrinsic patterns in the spatial organization of an organism’s distributions to predict what the occupancy would be, given the occupancy at a coarser resolution.

Groom et al. (2018) tests different downscaling models on birds and plants in four countries and in different landscapes and shows which models work best. The results show that all models work similarly, irrespective of the type of organism and landscape. However, some models were biased, either under- or overestimating occupancy. However, a few models were both reliable and unbiased. This means we can automate calculation of species occupancy. Workflows can harvest data from many sources and calculate species metrics in a timely manner, potentially delivering warnings so that interventions can be made.

Species invasions, habitat degradation and mass extinctions are not a future threat, they are happening now. Understanding how we should react, and what policies we need should be underpinned by solid evidence. Imagine if we had systems where we could monitor biodiversity just like we monitor the climate in easy to understand numbers that are both accurate and sensitive to change.