[Coral-List] Online Resource for Monitoring Marine Forests: Seeking Regional Coordinators

Marcio Coelho marcio.coelho.ag at gmail.com
Fri Sep 28 10:00:07 UTC 2018


Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to a new online resource for recording and monitoring the worldwide distribution of marine forests, which our team has been developing and which now extends to encompass the animal “forest” concept. The project is a global open source initiative supported by scientists and volunteer citizens from all around the world. We are seeking to recruit regional coordinators that can help promoting the project and managing the data repository. The project is available at https://marineforests.com <https://marineforests.com/> and has the following main objectives:

1. To build and maintain a database of distribution records and biological traits of marine forest species of seaweeds, marine plants and benthic suspension feeders, at global scales;
2. To build and maintain a digital infrastructure facilitating information exchange between citizens and the scientific community;
3. To use the data to provide freely available information about marine forest worldwide. In particular, aiming to assemble organized information that is useful for marine conservation and environmental and societal needs;
4. To promote education, marine literacy and societal capacity in marine biodiversity data collection, management and reporting tools;
5. To follow the FAIR principle, to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (Wilkinson et al., 2016).

As an Associate Coordinator you can: 

1. Use Marine Forests as a data repository;
2. Use Marine Forests for citizen science initiatives;
3. Share own data under the FAIR principle;
4. Share Marine Forests on social media, a crucial step to engage coastal managers and the general public;

This initiative is also presently supported by the Pew Marine Fellows Charitable Trusts (USA), the BiodivERsA European Union network of funding organizations, and WORMS-World Register of Marine Species.

For more information about how to participate please visit the project's website https://marineforests.com <https://marineforests.com/>

Regards,
Márcio 

---------
Márcio Coelho
Postdoctoral Researcher
Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR)
University of Algarve
Campus Gambelas
8005-139 Faro, Portugal






More information about the Coral-List mailing list