“Overwhelming interest”: More than 70 participants from research, authorities, citizen science and data centers attend community workshop

Once again, the consortium invited participants to discuss current developments and new approaches for the biodiversity data portal Living Atlas of Nature in Germany (LAND) developed in NFDI4Biodiversity at the Community Workshop (January 20-21, 2025). The organizing team was particularly pleased that around 70 participants came together at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig:

"The overwhelming interest from authorities, professional societies, data centers, research and citizen science shows us that the Living Atlas has become a central component of the German biodiversity landscape in the two years since its launch," said Thore Engel (iDiv) at the end of the two-day event. "This encourages us, as the National Biodiversity Portal, to bundle open species occurrence data centrally for research and to offer the diverse biodiversity community in Germany a lively platform for exchange and networking with our annual workshops."

The LAND portal: expansions and future plans

One focus of the workshop was the further development of the LAND portal, which is a comprehensive platform for open biodiversity data. There are plans to integrate further valuable data sets, including historical forestry office data, plant monitoring data from the flora of Bavaria as well as ArtenFinder data. This will further expand the portal and make it a central point of contact for biodiversity data in Germany.

Insight into the publication process of biodiversity data

In the keynote speeches on the first day, the process of publishing biodiversity data was illustrated in a practical way. Key topics were covered, such as the submission of data via the GFBio Submission Service, the creation of peer-reviewed data papers with the support of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the simplification of metadata standards through the collaboration of ABCD and Darwin Core.

"The overwhelming interest shows us that the Living Atlas has become a central component of the German biodiversity landscape in the two years since its launch." (Thore Engel (iDiv))

Interactive workshops: From data visualization to citizen science

The community had the opportunity to engage in intensive discussions on various topics in interactive workshops. In the “LAND and people” session, for example, the visualization of data and its added value was discussed. They also discussed which data could be included in the LAND portal and whether a national iNaturalist node would be useful for Germany.

Another program item was dedicated to the management and curation of biodiversity data. Various software solutions were presented here, including BEXIS2 and Diversity Workbench for data management and OpenRefine for the harmonization of datasets.

Influence of structured biodiversity data

A highlight of the second day was the keynote speech by Dmitry Schigel, Scientific Officer at GBIF, on the scientific infrastructure of the international data network. Further keynote speeches then showed the progress that can be made with structured biodiversity data. It became clear that the needs within the community are very different: Some participants addressed the challenges of making data publicly available, others reported on the positive impact of citizen science projects such as FLOW (which aims to collect standardized data on the ecological status of small streams to complement official water monitoring). The work of taxa-specific associations such as Insekten Sachsen and their challenges in species identification were also discussed.

Promotion and networking: looking to the future

Another key topic was the future of NFDI4Biodiversity and the funding opportunities for the second phase of the consortium. The new “Topic Tables” format was presented, which will offer the biodiversity data community further opportunities to jointly pursue specific topics and advance projects, and has already been tested in small groups. 

At the end of the workshop, there was an opportunity for further strategic discussions in smaller groups. Once again, the focus was on the exchange between the various players in the biodiversity data community.