See also:
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European Biodiversity Projects:
Research Projects Funded by the European Commission |
| European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) |
The European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy, EDIT, is an initiative included in the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union. The aim is to create a European Network of Excellence in taxonomy for biodiversity and ecosystem research. 27 leading European, North American and Russian institutions participate in the network. This project started on the 1st of March 2006 and will last 5 years.
The project objectives are to help to reduce the fragmentation in European taxonomic research and expertise and to coordinate the European contribution to the global taxonomic effort, in particular the Global Taxonomy Initiative, through an integrated initiative aimed at improving society’s capacity for biodiversity conservation.
http://www.e-taxonomy.eu/ |
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| ALTERNet - A Long Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network |
ALTERNet is an excellence network included in the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union, planned for a five years term. Its main aim is to integrate capacity across Europe to assess and forecast changes in
biodiversity, structure, functions and dynamics of ecosystems and their services.
Several initiatives are in motion to achieve this objective:
- The creation of a network of Long-Term Ecosystem Research-Sites (LTER).
- Besides, the creation of an associated network of Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research Sites (LTSER) which could be used to determine the socio-economic implications of, and public
attitudes to, biodiversity loss.
- The launching in 2005 of the International Press Centre for Biodiversity Research (IPCB), a regularly updated online source of news and press releases about international biodiversity research, serving journalists and other users.
- The development of a training programme, leaded by AlterNet Summer Schools: aimed at equipping young researchers with the knowledge and skills to undertake
integrated biodiversity research at a European level.
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| Marbef - Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Network of Excellence |
MARBEF is an excellence network funded by the European Union. It consists of 83 European marine institutes and it is a platform to integrate and disseminate knowledge and expertise on marine biodiversity, with links to researchers, industry, stakeholders and the general public.
Its main goal is the development of common strategies to facilitate the collaboration and the access to the research resources about the marine environment. This also includes the management and integrated operation of the data produced in the diverse related projects.
Among the information available through Marbef, these ones are specially attractive:
- The directory of European Marine Biodiversity Research Sites, with information about the different centres included in the network.
- The search engine for European Marine Biodiversity Datasets, with information about the data stored, how to access it, related resources, and so on.
- The European Register of Marine Species (ERMS), with lots of information such as nomenclatural, distributions, common names, images...
- Finally, the European Ocean Biogeographic Information System - EurOBIS that make possible to perform distribution area searches, to draw them on a map, to compare data from different taxa, data download...
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| Species2000
Europa (EuroCat) |
The EuroCat/Species
2000 europa system will provide common access
to a growing catalogue of organisms embracing all species
in the three European taxonomic databases, plus those
in a large array of taxon databases. It will eventually
be possible to locate all species in the world and data
connected to them through this single point of enquiry,
using either scientific or common names. This will permit
the user to locate species of all groups, and to compare
different catalogues, classifications or sources. Professionals
and citizens will use it both as a resource to locate
species and as a gateway to access abundant data for a
specified organism from a vast array of sources.
http://sp2000europa.org/
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Biodiversity Collection Service for Europe (BioCASE) |
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| Fauna
Europaea |
Fauna
Europaea will assemble a database of the
scientific names and distribution of all living multicellular
European land and fresh-water animals. Experts in taxonomy
will provide data of all currently known species in Europe.
Together these data will form a united database, accessible
to everyone.
http://www.faunaeur.org/
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| Euro+Med
project - The Information Resource for Euro-Mediterranean
Plants |
The Euro+Med
project is developing a state-of-the-art information system
for European and Mediterranean vascular plants, based
on an agreed taxonomic framework. This will provide a
key focal point from which users of biodiversity information
will be able to access a broad range of internet data
resources related to plant taxonomy, biology, distribution
and conservation. A major output from the project will
be a synonymic catalogue of European plants, which will
provide a wide range of EU users (conservationists, planners,
policy makers etc) with an unambiguous source of botanical
information with which to address the ECs biodiversity
commitments. The projects has been upgraded with recent
floristic information and merged with other Euro-Mediterranean
data sets.
http://www.emplantbase.org/
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| European
Register of Marine Species (ERMS) |
The European
Register of Marine Species aims to create
a register of marine species in Europe, linked with bibliography
of identification guides, register of taxonomic experts
and locations of collections of reference specimens, and
information on European marine biodiversity. The species
register is novel in its geographic extent, range of taxa
covered, and use of state-of-the-art World Wide Web software
for publication and networking. It is anticipated that
the register will become a standard reference (and technological
tool) for marine biodiversity training, research and management
in Europe.
http://www.marbef.org/data/erms.php
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International biodiversity projects: |
| Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) |
The Integrated Taxonomic Information System - ITIS was born as a project of the US Government to create an easily accessible database with reliable information on species names and their
hierarchical classification. Even if most of the information provided by ITIS refers to North America (Canada, USA and Mexico), the check-lists provided for many biological groups have a global coverage.
http://www.itis.gov/ |
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| Tree of Life Project (ToL) |
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The Tree
of Life Project (ToL) is a collaborative
web project, produced by biologists from around the
world. On more than 2600 World Wide Web pages, the Tree
of Life provides information about the diversity of
organisms, their history and characteristics. Each page
contains information about one group of organisms. Individual
Tree of Life pages are linked one to each other in the
form of the evolutionary tree that connects all organisms.
http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html
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