Training in participatory biodiversity monitoring: Building locally, connecting globally

This proposed course, titled ‘Participatory biodiversity monitoring: building locally, connecting globally’, aims to bring together participants from Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Spain.  The course will cover four main topics: how to design a participatory monitoring plan, methodologies to facilitate the joint work of scientists and communities, good practices and technologies to facilitate data and information management, and tools for monitoring and evaluating the impact of such initiatives.

The course will be conducted over six days at the Rio Claro Natural Reserve in Antioquia in Colombia.  The course will not only cover theory and an exchange of national and regional experiences but will require practical work as well.  In the six months following the course, each participant will be required to prepare a participative monitoring plan, or revise an existing one — for their biodiversity initiative, by integrating the learnings from the course, and will be asked to publish a set of data on platforms interoperable with GBIF. The course syllabus and teaching resources will be openly available under a Creative Commons licence and will include lecture videos and a document containing selection criteria for and good practices to be followed with citizen science data to facilitate their availability through the GBIF publication model.

The practitioners who attend this course are also committing themselves to expand upon it by replicating the course locally by organizing at least one learning workshop.  Thus we are also training the trainers through this course.  This will ensure the continuation.

One of the important outcomes we foresee from this course will also be the consolidation of this Spanish-speaking community of practitioners. Towards this end, we will be setting up a digital presence (whether on Facebook or through a mailing list or some other option will be decided on a later date) and will seek to facilitate the continued interaction among this community.

Partners:

  • Instituto Alexander von Humboldt.
  • Colombian Node of GBIF (SiB Colombia).
  • National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Mexico.
  • Spanish Node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF.ES).
  • National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina.
  • Trompembos International Colombia.
  • Tejeredes, Spain.