Geospatially structured biodiversity information as a component of a regional biodiversity clearing house

摘要

To function effectively, the international biodiversity Clearing House Mechanism (CHM), based on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), needs to be rooted at the regional and local levels. This article presents an example of how stakeholders of regional data and information can be encouraged to form networks linked to national biodiversity focal points (NFPs). We pay special attention to exploiting the geospatial properties of biodiversity data and information, and demonstrate how data and information can best be filtered, classified and labelled to facilitate geographically based information retrieval on the Internet. The geocodability of bibliographic reports proved to be poor, indicating an urgent need to reconsider the geographical properties of biodiversity information under production. Also, it is useful to utilise networking processes with information from fields other than biodiversity when initiating the network. Finally, we present and discuss problems of integrity and interoperability of data, and also the process of biodiversity information production from the point of view of general information theory and innovations offered by modern information technology.