[Coral-List] Request for SUMMARY data – Western Indian Ocean GCRMN regional report 2016.

dobura at cordioea.net dobura at cordioea.net
Tue Jan 12 14:52:52 EST 2016


Dear Coral-listers
The Western Indian Ocean is in the process
of compiling its regional report for the GCRMN, following in the footsteps of
the Caribbean.  This is to call for all
contributions of monitoring data that you may have, to contribute to this
reporting effort. Countries covered by this region include: Comoros, Kenya,
Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, France (Reunion and overseas territories),
Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa & Tanzania.

Each country has a National Coral Reef Task
Force that is compiling country data, assisted in most cases by a National
consultant, and preparing a country report. A Regional Coordinator is
overseeing the process and will synthesize the national reports and compile the
regional report.

What we are looking for is:

-       
SUMMARY DATA – mean & standard
deviation, minimum and maximum, at monitoring site/station level. (ie. we are
NOT dealing with raw data, partly for practicality, partly to protect your
Intellectual Property)

-       
Primary datasets we are
reporting are BENTHOS and FISH, with MOBILE INVERTEBRATES where available.

-       
TIME SERIES data, with ideally
as long a span as possible, and as many reporting points as possible. We are
unlikely to use any series with less than 2 time points, unless different
comparable surveys complement each other.

-       
Any case study/topical
information on major events/disturbances.

Given we are asking for just summary data
and that the format(s) for this are relatively simple, we are requesting all
data to be submitted by mid-February. This will allow presentation of a draft
of the GCRMN report at ICRS (late June 2016) and completion by the IUCN
Conservation Congress (September 2016).

We have crafted a Data Sharing Agreement
for all contributors and participants in the process to sign. In this we commit
to not using your data for anything other than this reporting, and you commit
to the same for anyone else’s data that you might access through the process
(e.g. through reviewing national reports). Note again, this is just SUMMARY
data that you have hopefully (or should have) reported in a publication, not your
raw or primary data!! 

IF we have sufficient support, we would
like to publish the dataset/make it open access with a Creative Commons CC-BY license to the outputs, with all data owners
acknowledged, to promote Open Access approach to data sharing. But this will ONLY
be done through confirmation by all data owners through a new and updated Data
Sharing Agreement once the details of that process are determined (e.g. a
portal through www.obis.org).

For further details, the Data Sharing
Agreement, and all instructions, will be available on a website to be announced
here shortly. Meanwhile, please send your intention to submit data to gcrmn at cordioea.net. National coordinators
are responsible for compilation of each country’s data, but we will coordinate
external submissions through this regional node. 

Sincerely,

David Obura (Regional Coordinator)



A bit more: The principal work is supported
by the Indian Ocean Commission’s ‘Biodiversity Project’, and is being
undertaken with the Coral Reef Task Force of the Nairobi Convention (the UNEP
Regional Seas convention for the region). CORDIO has been hired by the Indian
Ocean Commission to coordinate the reporting, and we are also undertaking this
under our long term mandate to support coral reef monitoring in the region
through the GCRMN and International Coral Reef Initiative.





















































 




David Obura


CORDIO East Africa
#9 Kibaki Flats, Kenyatta Beach, Bamburi Beach
P.O.BOX 10135 Mombasa 80101, Kenya
www.cordioea.net ; Email: dobura at cordioea.netdavidobura at gmail.com
Mobile: +254-715 067417; skype dobura; Twitter @dobura


More information about the Coral-List mailing list