MBON Pole to Pole of the Americas: Tools for the analysis of coastal biodiversity using OBIS and remote sensing data, 2-5 April 2019. OTGA Training Course MBON2019MEXICO.

Abstract

The MBON Pole to Pole aims to address the biodiversity priorities of various GEO initiatives, including Blue Planet and AmeriGEOSS, and coordinates with the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO and OBIS, and other national and international groups to serve the broadest possible community. This network will help nations and regions to improve conservation planning and environmental impact mitigation, serve the scientific community, and satisfy commitments to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Aichi Targets of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). This second workshop builds on activities and achieved goals from a first meeting in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, August 6-10, 2018. The purpose is to continue the development of a community of practice dedicated to understanding change in marine biodiversity and generating knowledge and products that inform conservation and management strategies of marine living resources by engaging researchers, managers and policy-makers with interest in biodiversity monitoring and data synthesis and analysis. During this workshop participants will: - Advance already agreed field sampling protocols for rocky shores and sandy beaches; - Manipulate tabular and spatial data already collected at their study sites for standardized data formats using Darwin Core vocabularies and quality controls; - Develop specific vocabularies for flora and fauna of rocky shore and sandy beach measured during field surveys; - Publish survey datasets to the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) using tools for sharing data; - Advance knowledge on data science tools (R, Rmarkdown, Github) to mine data, visualize and analysis, and produce reproducible research documents with interactive visualizations onto the web.