Yanina Sica, our Data Manager for Map of Life, recently organized a symposium with VertNet collaborator Paula Zermoglio for the TDWG 2021 Virtual Conference on Tuesday, October 19. The session, titled “From the field, right on to your science table: challenges of sharing ecological data”, featured presenters from Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, and the United States, and drew a crowd of 199 attendees. The session description, supplied by the organizers, was as follows:

“Access to high-quality ecological data, such as those generated from monitoring efforts, is pivotal to assessing and modelling biodiversity and its change through space and time. In the face of the unprecedented biodiversity loss, inventory data are particularly relevant to meeting global monitoring and conservation goals. While the development and adoption of standards such as Darwin Core have ignited the mobilization and integration of incidental and opportunistic records, current standards are insufficient to capture the complexity and hierarchical structure of inventory data. This, together with a lack of sufficient incentives, has resulted in limited mobilization, integration and re-use of this type of data. Current efforts are working towards developing standards to share inventory data, i.e., Humboldt extension to Darwin Core. To maximize the efficacy of this and other initiatives in fully capturing the breadth of information available in inventory data, and facilitating their broader applicability and use, it is critical that different parties converse, identify common needs and possibilities regarding data sharing. This symposium will bring together insights from a broad range of members within the community. It will constitute an opportunity to engage in the discussion to direct future efforts on standards development for sharing ecological data.”

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