Despite being part of a global biodiversity hotspot, Hispaniola—the island shared between the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti—severely lacks information about its rich biodiversity at a suitable spatial scale for biological research and decision making, especially concerning land-use. As a result, critical habitats are destroyed every day, pushing many unique species closer to extinction. This is partly due to the lack of resources and capacity on these topics at local data-holding institutions.
Through this project, Grupo Jaragua will take the first steps in biodiversity data mobilization for Hispaniola by:
- assessing existing biodiversity data holding institutions, their collections and identifying key experts in Haiti and the DR,
- signing collaboration agreements for data mobilization and publishing,
- identifying publishable data sets of its own and helping partners do the same,
- adding value to Hispaniolan data currently on GBIF by georeferencing using record´s locality data
- drafting a data publishing protocol appropriate for each institution,
- conducting training workshops to build capacity in GBIF data publishing, data publishing protocols, and use of GBIF data for decision making using local examples
- providing on-going mentoring for partners so they can publish their own datasets, and
- increasing citizen science contribution by engaging experts to help with the identification of iNaturalist observations.
