Species Checklist Crossmapping and Precursor National Checklists Generation from GBIF Mediated Data

In March 2015, Species 2000 organised a training hackaton for the creation of precursor national checklists. The training hackathon was a GBIF regional support action targeted at European GBIF participant nodes to enhance capacity, by addressing the joint need for producing national checklists.

The hackathon aimed to 1.) train nodes in using available cross-mapping tools and 2. to develop tools and workflows (with hands-on training) that facilitate the creation of precursor national checklists using the GBIF data network including Catalogue of Life and other datasources.

Without complete national checklists, countries cannot effectively implement national scientific biodiversity networks because all accumulated information about a species is tied to a scientific name. Several GBIF work programmes included tasks to identify, evaluate end develop the foundations for such checklists, with the ultimate goal to develop a Catalogue of Names of Known Organisms as described in GBIFs founding report. The Catalogue of Life, a federation of taxonomic databases developed by Species2000 and ITIS, plays an important role in this and is tightly integrated with the GBIF network.