The first stage of the project “The Chronicle of the Nature of Russian Protected Areas: Digitization and Mobilization of Data” was completed.
The first results were obtained: the data sets of the project participants, the Malaya Sosva and Pechoro-Ilychsky nature reserves, were published on the portal of the World System for Information on Biological Diversity and prepared a future guide on digitization and publication of data on the Nature Chronicles.
The report was adopted by the Secretariat of the World Biodiversity Information System (GBIF.org) and posted on the website.
This project is being implemented by the Prioksko-Terrasny Biosphere Reserve at the expense of budgetary and extrabudgetary funds (60% of costs) and with the support of a grant from the Secretariat of the Global System of Information on Biological Diversity for research (40% of costs).
The Global Biodiversity Information System (GBIF.org) is free and open access to biodiversity data. The Prioksko-Terrasny State Reserve is the first to publish data on the Annals of Nature in the Global Biological Diversity Information System (GBIF). As of today, 6 data sets containing information about 27 thousand finds have been published. For 2 years, the data are cited in 25 scientific publications.
This project aims to spread the successful experience of our reserve to other reserves and national parks and to mobilize data from the Nature Chronicles of reserves for new research.
Nature Chronicles are unique archives of annual scientific reports that collect the results of observations of natural objects in territories derived from economic use for many decades. Information was collected by professional researchers according to a single methodology; many reserves preserve long-term data on phenological phenomena in the wild, the number and diversity of animal and plant species. In a number of nature reserves Nature Chronicles is still stored only on paper, the unique perennial data series have not previously been published in scientific articles and are virtually inaccessible to many researchers.
In October 2019, the Prioksko-Terrasny Biosphere Reserve will hold a seminar to mark the 40th anniversary of participation in the MAB program and to fulfill the strategic objectives of the biosphere reserves and the Lima Plan of Action of the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Program.
A training course will be organized for employees of scientific departments of nature reserves and national parks, and training materials will be prepared in Russian, aimed at digitizing and publishing data from the Chronicle of Nature. During the implementation of our project through GBIF.org, data on biodiversity and phenological phenomena in reserves will be published.
Researchers, technical curators of databases and deputy directors for scientific work in Altai, Visimsky, Voronezhsky, Pechoro-Ilychsky, Bryansk forest, Belogorye, Zhigulevsky, Kologrivsky forest, Malaya Sosva, Oka, Central Forest, national parks Bashkiria, Ugra and Yugyd va. The workshop focuses on participants’ practical skills in digitizing and electronic publication of data through global biodiversity systems. This will be especially useful for those nature reserves that have already begun digitizing databases, but have difficulty in publishing them on the Internet at GBIF.org.
