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Electronic data recording tools and identifying species in the field
Kroupa, Alexander
Hoffmann, Anke
Monje, Juan Karlos
Häuser, Christoph L.
2010
Abstract
The “European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy”
(EDIT) is an initiative of 28 European, North American and Russian
institutions to build a network in “Taxonomy for Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Research”, with the objective to reduce the fragmentation
in taxonomy through institutional integration in Europe (www.etaxonomy.
eu). European Commission funding (FP6) for this “Network
of Excellence” has started in March 2006, and runs for 5 years. For
EDIT Work Package 7 (WP 7) “Applying Taxonomy to Conservation”
the aim is to strengthen the input of taxonomic expertise in Europe for
biodiversity conservation, by organizing the participation of individual
taxonomists and experts in biodiversity inventory and monitoring
efforts in conservation areas (www.atbi.eu).
For biodiversity inventories and monitoring, the advantage of using
digital field recording tools is to simplify data recording as well as to
improve data quality. The use of electronic field tools and software
should be promoted to help minimizing error rates, in particular to avoid
mistakes from the beginning of the recording chain. Many errors may
be avoided by using authority lists, e.g. for countries, habitat-types
or taxa that can already be determined in the field. Automated georeferencing
and recording of date and time in standardized formats
already in the field will also avoid errors when importing or retyping
such data into a database. Relevant software should be usable for
tools such as mobile phones with GPS (Global Positioning System)
functionality up to water resistant PDAs - Personal Digital Assistant
(e.g. Magellan - Mobile Mapper; Trimble – Juno, Nomad).
Examples presented here for more efficient electronic data recording
in the field include the application of mobile recording devices with
customized forms, which are tested for field work in ATBI+M (All Taxa
Biodiversity Inventories + Monitoring; www.atbi.eu) sites operated
in the EDIT project. This is a general approach for recording georeferenced, individual species data using customized forms for
ESRI ArcPad applications. Species names can be selected from a
taxonomic authority list provided in a file in dBASE-format. Such files
can be easily created, modified, and exchanged to allow individual
researchers to use regional or otherwise customized species lists.
Fields and field formats correspond to ABCD standards so that
exports of recorded locality, event, and species data can be directly
integrated into a central database and applications for individual
ATBI+M websites (e.g. www.atbi.eu/mercantour-marittime/ or www.
atbi.eu/gemer/). The authority species lists may be customized for
a geographic area (e.g., a nature reserve) and/or a group of taxa
(e.g., larger birds). This allows each expert to choose the species
list needed for his/her research. Problems remain with observation
records which cannot be reliably determined in the field. Therefore
identification help should be made available on the PDA at least for
difficult taxa.
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Alexander Kroupa [et al.], Electronic data recording tools and identifying species in the field, in Pier Luigi Nimis and Régine Vignes Lebbe (eds.): “Tools for Identifying Biodiversity: Progress and Problems. Proceedings of the International Congress, Paris, September 20-22, 2010”, Trieste, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2010, pp. 421-422.
Languages
en
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