The conference organizers issue the following two challenges to the subcommunities of researchers and users of Biodiversity Informatics. Each subcommunity will have the opportunity to submit manuscripts that respond to these challenges for possible publication in the Conference Proceedings Volume.

The challenges are:

1. Prepare a real-time demonstration for the three days of the e-Biosphere 09 conference that shows how information on new discoveries enters, propagates, and becomes interconnected with the rest of Biodiversity Informatics. For example, can a newly discovered species be described, published, and documented worldwide through a cascade of information through interconnected databases, all in three days?

2. Prepare a Position Paper that describes the information resources, database interoperability, and data analysis capabilities that each subcommunity will need five to ten years from now. For example, what new information resources and informatics capabilities will agricultural researchers need? What interoperability will they need concerning plant biology, agricultural pests, pathogens, invasive species, environmental factors, to name a few?

Adeniyi A. Jayeola (Department of Botany, University of Ibadan, Nigeria) has written a very good example to start collaborative knowledge building of invasive species, http://www.bgci.org/africa/bulletin_11/ :

"STEMMING THE MENACE OF ALIEN PLANT INVASION THROUGH BOTANIC GARDEN EDUCATION
The ever-increasing aesthetic valuation of the people
has led to unprecedented traffic of ornamental plants worldwide. ...
Botanical Gardens University of Ibadan (BGUI)
is currently battling to eradicate two elegant invaders,
an Asystasia sp. and Ruellia tuberosa. ...
At the Botanical Garden University of Ibadan,
our approach to stemming the menace of
invasive plants is preventive, interacting
regularly with the inlets/outlets,
the commercial plant nursery operators,
to point out to them, the potential dangers of
trading in invasive plants, by providing
botanical information on suspected invaders.
Preventing the introduction of a
potentially invasive plant is far less costly
and far more effective than their eradication...
Environmental responsibility is
the hallmark of a sustainable trade.
.... the education unit of
BGUI is striving to build an image library of prints,
paintings and drawings of
potentially invasive ornamental plants in Nigeria.

THe last statement is very important: "an image library of prints, paintings and drawings of potentially invasive ornamental plants". I wonder why not to use also digital photos for identification. I understand that one reason may be shortage or lack of computers and Internet. On the other hand there may be stations in libraries and in schools or other suitable safe places where people could have chance to identidy suspected invasive species quickly and effortlessly. Application of NatureGate Online Services approarch collaboratively into invasive species in Nigeria could be one answer, IFF funding and founding are possible.
More information: NATUREGATE® R&D and business program:
(1) http://www.naturegate.net

(2) http://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/cec/?2614/

(3) http://www.ymparisto.fi/default.asp?node=5319&lan=en

(4) Finnair’s Blue Wings magazine has published a beautiful article of NatureGate
http://www.digipaper.fi/bluewings/25082/ The article is on pages 60 – 63. The fastest way to find it is to use pull-down menu on the top of the pages.


Yours sincerely

Mauri

_________________
Dr. Mauri Ahlberg FLS
Professor of Biology and Sustainability Education
University of Helsinki, FINLAND