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August 16, 2010

TO: The IABIN Executive Committee and IABIN Council

IABIN Executive Committee: Gladys Cotter – (Chairperson) United States of America Karin Molt – (Vice-Chair) Chile Ana Aber – Uruguay Dionne Newell - Jamaica Dario Luque – Panamá Marina Hernandez - Dominican Republic Mervin Haynes – Grenada Edgar Selvin Pérez - Guatemala Juan Bello - Global Biodiversity Information Facility Maarten Kappelle – The Nature Conservancy

FROM: GS/OAS RE: Eleventh Semester Report – Period: January 1 – June 30th, 2010

Building the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN)

1. SUMMARY AND IABIN PROJECT MILESTONES BY COMPONENT In the first semester of 2010, the GEF “Building IABIN” project continued accelerated progress compared to previous project years. Disbursements were in line with the last semester of 2009 and higher than previous semesters given that (i) TNs and the Catalogue Agreements have advanced to the point where the data is available to be used by other TNs and other Networks, (ii) RfPs for data content grants were active in all 5 TNs and the Catalog and a last RfP was recently advertised, (iii) data content grants funded or in preparation have reached 124, (iv) the first six grants for the development of value added tools under Component #3 began development (v) grants have been awarded under the Catalog to develop web services under most TNs (vi) partnerships and fundraising efforts started to nurture potential partnerships based on proposals written by the Vision/MTR (Mid-Term Review) and fundraising consultant, as well as individual Thematic Networks. The major challenges expected in the coming Semester will be to (i) take the steps to promote the sustainability of IABIN by preparation of several fundraising proposals (ii) set the vision for IABIN after the GEF Project and formulate a project profile for the GEF 2 project (iii) prioritize actions for fundraising including outreach/campaigns, communications by implementing fundraising and vision plan, (iv) continue facilitating the work of the CIs and interoperability of

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data across the Thematic Networks and IABIN Catalogue (v) complete, make available and integrate the 124 data content creation grants, (vi) integrate Component #3 “Information Tools for Decision Making” into TNs and Catalogue, and (vii) improve the IABIN portal to make it more functional and user friendly. The IABIN Project is helping IABIN to position itself by building an important hemispheric information network and forging partnerships between Government agencies, NGOs, academic institutions, and museums that house biological and geospatial information. The project closing date is June 30, 2011 and it is foreseen that it will be completed on time given that: (i) TNs have completed their work on standards and protocols, and most have fully implemented Component 1 funds for data digitization and organization tools (ii) Many Component 2 data content grants are now complete and nearly all remaining grants will be complete by late 2010 (iii) the IABIN Catalogue has implemented grants for each TN to develop web services, metadata and other interoperability objectives, for completion by Fall 2010 (iv) the value added tools grants from Component 3 should be completed, and (v) outreach and fundraising efforts will start to nurture potential partnerships based on proposals written by the Vision/MTR/ and fundraising consultant, and the new IABIN Coordinator. IABIN Project Milestones for January-June 2010

In the first half of 2010, IABIN made progress on a number of fronts:

• 124 (average 10k) data content creation grants were awarded or are in process between 2006-2010

• The IABIN Council and Executive Committee (IEC) members were kept informed of project execution and network activities through Semester and Workshop Reports, and by keeping IABIN.net and http://www.oas.org/dsd/Bio-Proj-Sum.htm up-to-date. In addition, the new IABIN Coordinator is working with IABIN Chair Gladys Cotter to distribute monthly updates to the Council, and has individually called each IEC member to discuss pending IABIN issues and priorities multiple times.

• IABIN webpage. www.iabin.net is operational in Spanish and English and the main server continues to operate with extensive co financing from the University of Tennessee under the management of USGS/NBII.

• Six projects under Component 3: Information Products for Decision Making advanced (see http://www.oas.org/dsd/IABIN/Component3.htm).

• All TNs have developed a training module, with many training materials in both English and Spanish. PATN and PTN will develop the training materials in Portuguese too.

2. COMPONENTS 1 AND 2 – INTEROPERABILITY AND ACCESS TO DATA AND DATA

CONTENT CREATION1

2.1. IABIN Catalog Service

1 Note: These 2 components have been merged in this Semester Report due to the interoperable nature of these 2 components at this time in the project

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The following major tasks and deliverables related to the IABIN Catalog have been accomplished or are near completion.

Accomplishments:

The IABIN Catalog, initially released in July 2008, is now active on IABIN.net, as well as iabin-catalog.nbii.gov. The IABIN Catalog is currently searching approximately 250,000 biological databases, web-sites, publications, and images relevant to the Americas. Additional content is being added monthly as relevant sources are identified.

Catalog developments include:

• Crawling of IABIN relevant content continues with integration of new content from IABIN partners, NBII and related initiatives on a regular basis.

• Organized and hosted IABIN Technical Working Group Meeting in Knoxville, TN at the University of Tennessee. Topics included: IABIN Infrastructure, Sustainability, Data Integration across TNs, and TN Content Grants.

• Continued revisions to include as much metadata as possible related to Geographic Location, Resource Type, and IABIN TN properties. This required considerable processing and reprocessing of IABIN content to insure accurate and high quality results would occur.

• Continued testing of various system components occurred to ensure Internet Browser compatibility (IE and Firefox primarily) and multilingual system components.

• Continued hosting and resolving issues, including Content Updates, to the IABIN.net Joomla based website hosted at the University of Tennessee.

• Determined that the existing extract SQL Server Database Structure for IABIN Thesaurus (based on NBII Thesaurus), provided by Brad Williams (CI support contractor) and consisting of three tables, would be sufficient. By adding Spanish and Portuguese translations to the MultiTes database, a feature MultiTes provides, these translations will be retrieved in the same fashion as other items populated in the MultiTes database such as Broader and Narrower Terms.

• Developed and tested a procedure to convert translations in the CI provided spreadsheets to the format required by MultiTes to import them into MultiTes. Once the existing translations are loaded into MultiTes, all additional additions and modifications of information in the Thesaurus will continue to be made in MultiTes with the new capability for maintaining Spanish and Portuguese translations. When the time arrives that a copy of the Thesaurus needs to be moved to the development, QA, or production databases to support the web services, the current extract procedure will perform the task.

• Explored a very simple way to use a feature in SQL Server 2005 to implement web services using the SQL Server ENDPOINT command. However, this feature was not available in the SQL Server 2005 Express edition being used for development and furthermore it was deprecated in SQL Server 2008. Therefore, this effort was dropped and web service creation using the ITIS guidelines will be used instead.

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• Developed most of the SQL Server code that is required to be the “back end” for the web services to do the work of retrieving from the database the data the web service will send back to the caller. The first seven sets of code developed were to provide the functionality of the six language specific translation services and one general purpose translation. For example, the SQL Server procedure, TranslateEnglishTermToSpanish , will do the database work for the web service of the same name; when given an English Term, it will translate to Spanish. There are six combinations of translations from the three languages: English, Spanish, and Portuguese to each of the other two languages. The general purpose TranslateTerm procedure takes three input parameters, the term, the input language (ENG, SPA, or POR), and the output language and produces the translation.

• Finalized a IABIN brochure that elaborates upon its purpose and services. Prepared copies for distribution during the IABIN Technical Working Group meeting as well as a web enabled copy for posting. The Brochure is available to all IABIN partners and TNs. Contact Mike Frame or Ben Wheeler.

• Began the process of selecting an IABIN Catalog Consultant to support IABIN Catalog Content Grants QA/QC, IABIN Technical Working Group, and other IABIN infrastructure tasks. The target for award is September 2010.

Complete list of Data Content Grants awarded under the IABIN Catalog:

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Status of Data Content Grants awarded under the IABIN Catalog:

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Upcoming Efforts:

Below is a list of upcoming efforts related to the Catalog Development, implementation, and further promotion

• Web services to allow remote access of the IABIN Trilingual Thesaurus began development in the last month of the second semester of 2009, and are nearing completion in mid-2010. This will allow IABIN TNs and partners to utilize the thesaurus for other search and organization functions and make it available to the broader conservation and development community. For example, terminology (i.e. invasive species) is referred to through a number of different and similar terms throughout the Americas. Sometimes invasive species is referred to as “non-native”, “alien”, or “introduced” species. By incorporating a thesauri-based Web Service, the IABIN Catalog will be able to provide more accurate search results to its users. The planned Web Service will include three thesauri, one each in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. By incorporating these thesauri, users will be able to retrieve related results regardless of the language of the search term entered.

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• NBII is investigating migration of the IABIN Catalog to the Vivisimo search technology it currently uses for its own search engine. This technology includes a number of benefits such as improved clustering of search results and an easy user interface. Additional investigation into this technology’s compatibility with IABIN systems and possible implementation will take place in the second semester of 2010.

IABIN Indicators Reporting Table, 1st Semester 2010

Indicator

Actual—1st

Semester 2010

Baseline

Last Semester’s

actual (Jul-

Dec2009)

Target—

2010

Summary Comments

1. Increase of Visits to the portal of Catalog

218 200 200 250 Based on Unique Visitors per month to the IABIN Catalog (note: not # visits, but # of unique visitors)

4. Data and metadata content increase in the Catalog increases :

200,000 150,000 200,000 250,000

5. Number of people trained per year on data creation tools, data quality and use of tools developed by Catalog

0 10/year 10 10 Based on IABIN TWG Meetings, etc.

2.2. Thematic Networks (TNs) Assuring that biodiversity data from these networks is as accurate as reported is essential given the myriad uses of such data in biological research, conservation assessment and education. Fortunately, the community has actively developed standardized approaches and methods for sharing biodiversity records. However, despite the best efforts of all involved, undocumented problems with geospatial data still persist. Each user therefore must vet records carefully to determine their fitness-for-use: often, a time consuming task. As a result, one of the Component #3 Value added products for decision making grants has been awarded to CIAT Colombia to do data cleansing and georeferencing where lat/long data is not been available, so the point data such as specimen collections can be pinpointed on a map.

2.2.1 Species and Specimens TN (SSTN)

As indicated in previous reports, the SSTN finished the execution of all activities corresponding to Component 1 (interoperability and data access) in 2008. In addition, it executed the remaining budget according to schedule. As a result, since 2009, INBio fully assumed the cost of maintaining and further enhancing the two developed tools, namely, Ara 2.0, which is the species and specimen information digitization and management tool, and the SSTN portal (version 2.0). In late 2009 and early 2010, as a contribution to the sustainability of the SSTN, INBio has been looking for additional funding to support further development of Ara 2.0. A $25,000 grant from the PROMEBIO project (an IDB funded project lead by IRBio in Honduras) has not been awarded yet (the granting process has taken longer time than expected) and a $62,000 grant awarded by CONICIT (Consejo Nacional de Investigación en Ciencia y Tecnología) has been formalized and will cover a period of two years. In addition, a project funded by Fundecooperación in Benin and Buthan allowed the implementation of a portal based on the

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SSTN portal and minor adjustments to Ara. The approximate amount of the funding is $20,000. As a result, we expect to make available a considerably more sophisticated new version of Ara by the end of 2010. Furthermore, INBio decided to migrate its Atta system to the new tool that results from these enhancements (an “Atta 2.0” based on Ara).

Throughout the year 2009 INBio supported, with its own budget, the operation of the SSTN portal, which included the following tasks:

• answering questions from users and data providers, • making sure the portal was up and running, • indexing and re-indexing the databases that data providers make available for the

first time or enrich by digitizing more data.

Because INBio could not continue covering the associated costs, a request for funding was submitted to the OAS in December of last year and $20,000 were approved during this first semester for the year 2010.

Concerning component 2 (creation of data content), INBio supported IABIN with the design

of a new call for seed money grant proposals for digitization of specimen and species level information. In addition, progress reports from institutions that are already executing a project through a seed money grant were assessed. Finally, even though training of trainer activities concluded in 2008, INBio continued supporting trainees who were implementing the national-level training activities in their countries or required personalized support and developed e-learning materials for both, Ara 2.0 and the portal software.

In terms of the sustainability of IABIN, as described in previous reports, EOL granted us $22,172 to conduct a feasibility study to implement a regional EOL in Central America. The study has been finished and, hopefully, will result in a proposal to implement a regional EOL in countries where it is technically feasible and politically viable (Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua,

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and El Salvador). Funding for that project will have to be raised but it would result in the generation of thousands of species level records that we will argue should be facilitated by the SSTN as well as EOL.

Data providers

The following table summarizes the SSTN Data Providers as of June 2010

Institution Expected # Specimen Records

Expected # Species Records

Specimens Data

Providers

Species Data

Providers

Administración de Parques Nacionales, Argentina - Algas, Líquenes y Hongos

Species 2,200 1

Administración de Parques Nacionales, Argentina - Aves Acuáticas de Laguna Blanca

Specimens 200,000 1

Administración de Parques Nacionales, Argentina - Mamíferos de Valor Especial

Specimens 7,062 1

Administración de Parques Nacionales, Argentina - Vertebrados Patagónico

Specimens 26,835 1

Aves & Conservación (A&C) – BirdLife en Ecuador / Dr. Olaf Jahn

Species 842 1

Aves & Conservación (A&C) – BirdLife en Ecuador / Dr. Olaf Jahn / 3 llamado

Specimens 90,000 1

Aves & Conservación (A&C) – BirdLife en Ecuador / Olaf Jahn / 5 llamado

Specimens 35,000 1

Fundación para el Desarrollo Agrario – Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina

Specimens 64,527 1

Centro de Ornitología y Biodiversidad – CORBIDI / Thomas Valqui, Pablo Venegas y Manuel Apaza

Species 27,000 1,000 1 1

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Universidad Estadual de Campinas Centro Pluridisciplinar de pesquisas químicas, biológicas e agrícolas

Species 1,250 1

CONICET – ARG Specimens 41,800 1

Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Química y Biología, Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Specimens 20,756 1

Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Química y Biología, Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Species 16,158 1

INVEMAR, Colombia Specimens 10,000 1

Circulo Herpatologico de Panama Specimens 4,900 1

Fundacion Miguel Lillo, Argentina Species 50,000 5,000 1

Fundación Óga - ARG Specimens 11,500 1

Fundación Ornitológica Sierra Nevada / Walberto Naranjo

Specimens 400,000 1

Herbario CPUN de la Universidad Nacional de Cajamarca

Specimens 10,000 1

Herbario de Panamá, Universidad de Panamá. Briófitos

Specimens 17,000 1

Herbario de Panamá, Universidad de Panamá. Vasculares

Specimens 28,000 1

Herbario Nacional Colombiano de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Specimens 40,000 1

Herbarium Arequipense (HUSA) de la Universidad Nacional de San Agustín

Specimens 11,000 1

Instituto Alexander Von Humboldt (escarabajos coprófagos)

Species 250 1

Instituto de Botánica Darwinion, Argentina Specimens 40,000 1

Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria Species 2,000 1

Herbario Nacional Colombiano de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Specimens 72,000 1

Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM)

Species 164 1

Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM)

Specimens 18,000 1

Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Ricardo Palma - PERU

Specimens 11,000 1

Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Ricardo Palma - PERU

Species 1,589 1

Universidad Federal de Pernambuco Specimens 15,000 1

Museo de Malacología de la Universidad de Panamá (MUMAUP)

Specimens 10,000 1

Museo del Instituto de Zoología Agrícola (MIZA), Universidad Central de Venezuela

Specimens 20,000 1

Museo Entomológico León, Nicaragua Specimens 60,000 1

Museo Nacional de Costa Rica Specimens 58,100 1

Museo Nacional de Historia Natural y Antropología, Uruguay

Species 379 1

Museo Nacional de Historia Natural y Antropología, Uruguay

Specimens 32,000 1

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PRONATURA Veracruz A.C. / Eduardo Martínez Specimens 18,867 1

Red Nacional de Jardines Botánicos de Colombia Species 1,450 1

Sociedad Malacológica de Chile / Sergio Letelier Specimens 20,000 1

The Institute Of Jamaica / Elizabeth Morrison and Damian Jackson

Specimens 23,500 1

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Species 4,000 1

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador Specimens 10,000 1

Total 666,364 33,282 30 13

IABIN Indicators Reporting Table,1st Semester 2010

Indicator Actual—1st

semester 2010 Baseline

Last Semester’s actual (Jul-Dec

2009)

Target—2010

Summary Comments

1. Increase of Visits to the SSTN portal

3,712 monthly average visits to the page registered. Portal was out of service for 2 weeks in June and July for migration to other server

667 monthly average visits to the page registered in 2007

4,049 average monthly page visits hits

5,000 page visits on average per month.

Detailed information available on http://species.iabin.net/awstats/awstats.pl?month=01&year=2009&output=main&config=species.iabin.net&framename=index

4. Data and metadata content increase in the SSTN portal:

# Specimen data

providers and

specimen

records: 6 new data suppliers for a total of 311 077 new specimens’ records. # Species data

providers and

species records: We worked with 1species data provider; however they digitized specimens data reason why that project is not included in this box.

# Specimen data

providers and

specimen records: 7 data providers with a total of 3 420 718 specimens records by the end of 2007. # Species data

providers and

species records: 1 supplier was added to the SSTN with 3 784 records during 2007 in accordance to the report of that year.

# Specimen

data providers

and specimen

records: 9 new data suppliers for a total of 288 116 new specimens records. # Species data

providers and

species

records: No new species data suppliers were added.

# Specimen data

providers and

specimen

records: 26 data suppliers for a total 651 177 specimens records projected by 2010 # Species data

providers and

species records:

11 data suppliers with a total of 33 282 species records.

The support information that complements this indicator is page 11

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2.2.2 Invasive Species TN (I3N)

Objectives

Activities in the first half of 2010 focused on completion of content grant agreements, growing I3N records, and I3N database redesign. The network is also looking toward the future and exploring means of sustainability and has received a grant from the FEMCIDI Program of the Organization of American States. Milestones and achievements in the first semester of 2010 (categorized by main subtitles in

work plan)

Tools and Standards

• The first deliverables were made under a contract on the Redesign and Conversion to Open Source of the I3N Database and completion of the tool is expected in the second semester.

Collaboration and Communications

• The IABIN focal point for Bolivia is now working with the Vice Ministry of the Environment, Biodiversity, and Climate Change (VMABCC) to draft a national plan for the detection, prevention, management and control of invasive species. Workshops and meetings to draft this plan are scheduled for the second semester of 2010.

• The I3N-US Lead and the I3N coordinator submitted an edited version of the proposal to the Organization of American States FEMCIDI fund in February. It was approved by the OAS in April. The agreement for the project, entitled “Caribbean Regional Invasive Alien Species

(IAS) Information Network for Early Detection and Control of Invasive Species in Ports,” is currently being drafted in coordination with representatives from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and St. Lucia and with assistance from the I3N Lead for the U.S. Work on this project will begin in the second semester of 2010.

5. Number of people trained per year on data creation tools, data quality and use of tools developed by the SSTN

3 people from 2 countries trained on Tools developed by SSTN. Damian Jackson (Institute of Jamaica), Carlos Enrique Aparicio and Isidoro Sanchez Vega (University of Cajamarca, Peru)

9 people from 9 Countries were trained during the second semester of 2008 in accordance with the report presented.

11 people trained in the use of SSTN Tools.

5 people trained using virtual mechanisms.

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• The I3N Lead from Brazil led a training activity for protected area managers and staff in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. About 25 people attended a 3-day training which included the basics of biological invasions, impacts, management practices, work in the field controlling invasive plants at the Rio Vermelho State Park in Florianopolis, and discussion of action plans written for all the 10 state parks in Santa Catarina.

• The I3N Lead for Brazil attended a seminar on invasive alien species held at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, under the Environmental Safeguard Unit. She is developing a document on invasive species to provide support for project evaluation.

• Improvement in content of the Brazil I3N invasive species database, with addition of 1,000 references, 50 websites, 100 herbarium records, 100 new occurrences, and 5 new species (IABIN Data Content-Building Grants).

• The I3N-Brazil Lead is leading development of control plans for invasive alien species in two state parks in Santa Catarina (Parque Estadual do Tabuleiro and Parque Estadual Fritz Plaumann), to be completed by the end of August, 2010.

• The I3N-Lead for Brazil published a revised version of invasive species official list in Parana state, through the Parana Environmental Agency (IAP).

• The I3N-Lead for Brazil researched a project to define best control methods for 10 invasive plant species in Santa Catarina state with funding from the state foundation for support on research FAPESC. Species are: Furcraea foetida, Impatiens walleriana, Tradescantia zebrina, Hedychium coronarium, Casuarina equisetifolia, Terminalia cattapa, Leucaena leucocephala, Hovenia

dulcis, Rubus fruticosus, and Melia azedarach. To be completed by Feb. 2011. • I3N leads and the IABIN Focal Point from Uruguay continued to participate in coordinating

meetings of the National Council of Invasive and Exotic Species and to participate in the drafting of a National Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Invasive Species. The I3N-Brazil Lead assisted in review of the national strategy and a finalized document is expected in the second semester of 2010.

• The Chile I3N leads participated in the development of a national inventory of invasive species led by the Ministerio del Medio Ambiente y la División de Recursos Naturales Renovables y Biodiversidad. The completed I3N database is part of this project, which should be completed in the second semester of 2010. The list of 120 invasive species is available at: http://especies.conama.cl/CNMWeb/Web/WebCiudadana/Default.aspx

• The I3N community was kept informed via the Web site and the I3N listserv with postings and announcements.

• Countries’ additional products and initiatives include: All countries that participate in I3N make their datasets available to the public via the Website. In addition, some countries choose to provide reports, publications, presentations, photographs and other materials of interest to invasive species specialists. Please click on http://i3n.iabin.net/participants/country_contributions.html to access any of these country resources.

• The I3N-Argentina Lead assisted Bolivia and Chile to publish their databases online and to republish the Costa Rica database.

• In June of 2010, a doctoral thesis in biology was defended at the Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto on the potential spread of the genus Tamarix (Plantas,Tamaricaceae) in Argentina.

• The I3N-Argentina database was used to identify experts to participate in the drafting of a national strategy to deal with invasive species.

• The I3N listserv, as of February 2010, has been periodically notified by the Jamaica CHM of its online posting of newsletter "Aliens of Xamayca" (www.jamaicachm.org.jm , see Articles).

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The newsletter is produced by the National Environment and Planning Agency in Jamaica and features introduced species including those that are invasive.

• Invasive species were a part of the Institute of Jamaica’s (IOJ) display at the National Environment and Planning Agency’s Media Launch for the International Year of Biodiversity in April 2010.

• An account of the I3N-Jamaica was submitted for inclusion in the 4th National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

• GISIN partner Michael Browne, presented the I3N database at the “Helping Islands Adapt” workshop in New Zealand in April 2010

• For the last three years, Mexico has been working towards the development of its National Invasive Species Strategy that will be available in September 2010.

• The amount of data within the National Invasive Species Information System (NISIS) of Mexico has been increasing with information obtained from the literature and through projects supported by CONABIO.

• I3N-Mexico led several workshops on invasive species throughout the country and participated in a workshop in the U.S. in March.

• I3N-Uruguay leads published several papers, gave several lectures, taught courses, and participated in workshops to disseminate information on invasive alien species, particularly coastal species, and on the I3N database.

• The I3N-US and I3N-Mexico leads both participated in the first workshop to form the North American Invasive Species Network (http://www.naisn.org).

• The I3N-US Lead chaired a plenary on invasive species early detection and led an I3N Risk Assessment session at the biennial Weeds Across Borders Conference, a tri-national conference, a meeting of invasive plant experts from Canada, Mexico and the U.S. As a result they submitted an article: Simpson, Annie and Elizabeth Sellers. 2010. I3N risk assessment and pathway analysis: tools for the prevention of biological invasions. Proceedings of the 2010

Weeds Across Borders Conference. In press Project Management

• Each country that actively participates in I3N has one or more organizations, represented by individuals, leading its efforts. These individuals, called I3N Leads or Co-Leads, coordinate I3N activities among the I3N Coordinating Institution, their country’s IABIN Focal Point (see description below), and data providers. Current active members (18) are: Argentina, Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, USA, Uruguay.

• I3N work with other TNs, IABIN IT TWG, and Catalog Coordinator: • SSTN: Instituto Alexander von Humboldt led cooperative species trainings with the

SSTN. • PTN: CI representatives are also members of I3N CI. • PATN: I3N risk analysis tool includes PATN data. • Catalog: I3N IT Lead is also actively co-leading the IABIN Catalog. • IABIN IT TWG: I3N IT Lead is also actively co-leading the IABIN IT TWG.

Capacity Building There were several capacity building workshops held in the first semester of 2010. These workshops were lead by the Argentina, Uruguay, and US leads.

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Data Content Grants

• On-going content grants include Argentina, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Venezuela.

• The Argentina database was updated through a content grant to the Administración de Parques Nacionales and now contains 650 species, 4664 occurrence records, 58 projects y 338 contacts.

• The Chile database was completed with 759 species added, including 56 vertebrate species and 703 plant species. The database is not yet available on the web, but will be soon.

• The I3N-Uruguay Leads completed a second content building grant that significantly increased the number of records available in the country database. The grant added 100 species and 2179 occurrences, as well as 6 contacts, 33 bibliographic references, and 14 projects.

• Ten countries2 now have their own standardized I3N Web sites based on the I3N Country Web system, and more are under development (click on country name to see country home page): Argentina | Bolivia | Brazil | Colombia | Costa Rica | Jamaica | Paraguay | Uruguay | Guatemala

2 Ecuador has a country database, but it is currently in transition and not available on-line. Once it has

been moved to a new server, it will again be available on-line.

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Listo f Data Content Grants Awarded under I3N:

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IABIN Indicator Measuring Matrix

Indicator

Actual—1st semes

ter 2010

Baseline

Last Semester’s

actual (Jul-Dec

2009)

Target—

2010

Summary Comments

1. Increase of Visits to the portal of I3N

2,372 ? 2,091 6,000 +281 visits (+13.44%): I am in the process of updating the I3N Web Site and I would like to increase the visits by 50%. I know that this is a high goal, but it is something I am working towards..

4. Data and metadata content increase in the I3N increases:

2,400 (est)

? 2,400 (est) 2,400 Because most of our databases are already on-line we expect to see a maintenance, or small decrease, in the amount of new data over the next couple of semesters. This reflects the fact that the bulk of IAS data digitization has already taken place in participating countries.

5. Number of people trained per year on data creation tools, data quality and use of tools developed by I3N

0 ? 103 65 There were no training events held in the first semester of 2010. We expect to hold tools training events in October 2010 and early 2011. Because this will be a higher level of training the focus audience for these workshops is smaller than the broad IAS and database trainings previously held.

2.2.3 Ecosystems TN (ETN)

Component 1 Interoperability and Access to Data

• Implemented revisions to the Terrestrial, Marine and Continental and Insular Waters

Standard Format recommended by the group of experts who met in Panamá in October, 2009. Some changes in the Marine Standard Format are still under development.

• The standard format for Continental and Insular Waters is in process of development. The table structure and the interface for entering data are ready. Further functionality is still in development.

• Searching Databases: The ETN Portal provides users 4 ways of searching the Terrestrial Standard Format Database: 1) by vegetation type; 2) by country 3) by biogeopraphic/ecological criteria and 4) by genre/specie/country. The results of all searches can be exported to excel.

• A new addition to the ETN Portal is the CrossWalk functionality, under the symbol , indicating that a given class within a classification found in a search, has a corresponding class in the Reference Classification. Cases where the symbol is not present indicate to the user that the only files found on a search are in the Reference Classification.

• Reports: Three reports can be obtained from querying the Terrestrial Standard Format Database:

o Ecosystem classification by country: Shows all the classifications under which ecosystem classes have been registered by country.

o Records entered by country: Show all the records of classes entered by country, for all classifications used.

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o Ecosystems by country and classification: Show all the records of classes that belong to a country by classification.

• The contents of each of these reports can be exported to an excel table.

• The ETN Portal is in process of revision and translation into English. William Ulate was hired to translate the portal from Spanish into English.

• A map viewer system for the ETN terrestrial and freshwater ecosystem has been developed

by TNC and NatureServe as part of a Component 2 Grant and matching funds, respectively, and can be seen at the following address: gg.usm.edu/raber/iabin/. The layers presented in the prototype correspond to variables in the layers of the Terrestrial Standard Format and different thematic views and overlays can be executed based on the attributes of the map layers. The visualizer system links the standard format database and the maps that reside at servers in participating institutions. The visualizer will be accessible through the ETN Portal under development.

• We have solicited CAF to host the Cassia catalog system being used by the ETN. At the present time hosting is being considered by the GeoSur Program, under CAF.

• Because of trouble accessing the server holding the Portal and the databases at STRI, the ETN content was moved to a server in Tennessee.

3. Ecosystem (ETN) Data Content Grants

• The 6th Call to digitize terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystem data was published at the end of the last semester. Eight proposals were received: 3 from Peru, 2 from Paraguay, 2 from Argentina, and 1 from Ecuador. One Grant was awarded to El Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales to develop a bibliography for fresh water and marine ecosystem documents using the Dublin Core standard, and to review the quality of metadata submitted by institutions receiving ETN grants. A Grant was also awarded to Peru through Promar Pacifico. Both Agreements have been signed and are in progress.

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• An agreement was signed with the City of Knowledge Foundation to develop Web

Services for the ETN data. In process of development there are 16 Web Services that will allow the ETN to transfer the functionality of the Portal to ETN participating countries. Web Services under development deal with the Terrestrial Standard Format.

• Concerning the Database for Continental and Insular Waters, data are being provided by TNC for Central and South America under two Component 2 Data Content Grants. This work is in progress.

• A list of all the organizations receiving Grants and the amount is presented in the tables below.

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7. Data Quality

• A $20,000 Grant given to NatureServe to monitor data quality continued in operation. 8. Indicators

Records in the ETN (Terrestrial Standard Format)

Countries Records Reference Classification (NatureServe) 679 Bolivia 547 Brasil 7 Argentina 196 Chile 127 Uruguay 5 Central America 743 Mexico 144 Total 2448

Note: There are 7 records from Brazil added by Gonzalo Navarro.

Records in the ETN (Marine Standard Format)

Countries Records

Mexico 12 Chile 3 Uruguay 5 Colombia 1 Argentina 116 Total 137

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Spatial Records in the Terrestrial Standard Format

Country Total WMS Shape downloads Other

Argentina 196 196 Bolivia 547 547 Brasil 7 7 Chile 127 127 México 144 64 80 Reference Classification

679 679

Central America - TNC

743 743

Uruguay 5 5 Total 2448 745 1703

Spatial Records in the Marine Standard Format

Country Total WMS Shape downloads Other

Argentina 116 116 Colombia 1 1 Chile 3 3 México 12 11 1 Uruguay 5 5 Total 137 127 3 7

Visits to the ETN Portal

Year Jan-March April-June July -

September

October -

December Total

2006 215 215 2007 313 1091 503 612 2519 2008 555 1232 1265 962 4014 2009 922 438 743 821 2924 2010 464 872 1336 Total 1790 2761 2511 2610 9672

IABIN Indicators Reporting Table, 1st Semester 2010

Indicator

Actual—1st

Semester,

2010

Baselin

e

Last

Semester’s

actual (Jun-

Dec 2009)

Target

—2010

Summary Comments

1. Increase of Visits to the portal of ETN

1336 visits 215 visits

1564 visits 2000 visits

The number of visits went down relative to last semester. We suspect that the reason for this is that the Portal was down several

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weeks during the semester, and not all the data were available because of the transfer of servers. We expect this number to increase significantly next semester. The new visualizer, more data and new reports should significantly increase usage in the later part of next semester.

4. Data and metadata content increase in the ETN:

Standard

Format: 2585 records Metadata: 506 records

Standard

Format: 2435 records Metadata: 497 records

Standar

d

Format: over 3000 records Metadat

a: approximately 1000 records

Concerning the Standard Format, a record is the description of an ecosystem class within a classification system and includes a map. It is hard to estimate by how many records the databases will increase. What we know is that in July of 2010, all the Central American and South American fresh water standard format data will be on line. This could be as many as 1000 new records. Also the MACN has a grant to create metadata. This contract took a a long time to be signed, but it is ready and we expect approximately 400 new metadata to be delivered during the second semester. There are also several grants that will finish next semester and this will also increase the number of records.

5. Number of people trained per year on data creation tools, data quality and use of tools developed by the ETN

None 23 people Have not decided how the remaining funds will be used.

The people trained to use the ETN standard formats have been those who have received grants. In total 25 grants have been awarded. Other training has been in metadata through a grant to the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. They have assisted those who have received ETN Grants on the development of metadata on an individual basis.

2.2.4 Pollinators TN (PTN)

Activities and Results

IABIN PTN Portal The IABIN Pollinator Thematic Network has continued to meet and make great progress on the IABIN PTN web portal which is central to the architecture of PTN. IABIN Pollinator Thematic Network: 1) Data Entry Tool, 2) Data Portal, 3) Contacts Database, and 4) training manuals are accessible at http://pollinators.iabin.net/. The IABIN PTN portal has changed data center servers. It involved complicated infrastructure changes and the PTN is in the process of updating the code during this reporting period.

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Manuals The English version of the Data Portal Manual is almost complete. The Administrator Manual is more than half complete. Updates are being made the Digitizer Manual. All manuals will be complete and ready for distribution by the IABIN PTN Training the end of July. IABIN PTN Training

The PTN team recently prepared the last IABIN PTN training. It took place in Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil July 26-27, 2010 in conjunction with the Bee Congress, which began Wednesday, July 28, 2010 (http://rge.fmrp.usp.br/albelhudo/). The purpose of this was to give the participants of either meeting the opportunity to attend both events. Applications for attending the IABIN PTN Training were sent out to new data content grantees, suggestions from our focal point contacts, directors of museums, government agencies, universities, and department of agriculture staff. Applications were reviewed by the IABIN PTN team. In total, 44 people attended the IABIN PTN training, representing 12 different countries. The training was conducted in Portuguese and Spanish and PowerPoint slides were in English.

Data Content Grants

The PTN is currently working with 13 data content grantees to help them digitize and standardize their data (where necessary) and publish it online through the Pollinator Data Portal (PDP) and the IABIN metadata catalog.

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Countries represented by these grantees include Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Paraguay, Ecuador, Mexico and Argentina. Antonio Saraiva from the University of Sao Paulo has been reviewing the quality of the outputs and reports of the data content grants.

One of the grantees is still in process of drafting the agreement for signature. Three of the digitization projects have finalized. Nine are in the process of digitizing their data. We expect all of them to have completed digitization and publishing of the data by the end of 2010.

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IABIN Indicators Reporting Table,1st Semester 2010

Indicator

Last Semester’s

Actual

(Jul-Dec 2009)

Baseline

Actual—1st

Semester

(Jan-Jun

2009)

Target—

2010

Summary Comments

1. Increase of Visits to the web site of Pollinators Thematic Network (PTN) http://pollinators.iabin.net/ Increase of visits to Pollinator Data Digitizer (http://pollinators.iabin.net/digitizer) Increase of visits to the contacts database (http://pollinators.iabin.net/contacts)

848 visits 246 visits (155 new visits from 23 countries from America, Europe and Asia) 454 visits (217 new ) from 26 countries

Sem1 ‘07: 1061 visits Sem1 ‘08: 323 visits Sem2 ’08: 505 visits Not available (the analytics software was not installed on the first semester of 2009)

>1,000 visits Not available (the analytics software was not installed on the first semester of 2009)

5% increase

There was an increase in the number of visits to the PTN Web site http://pollinators.iabin.net likely due to increased interest within and communication with the international pollinator research community. A training workshop held in August 2009 and advertisement for an upcoming training in August 2010 in Brazil helped promote the network and may have also contributed to an increase in the access to the web site and tools.

4. Data and metadata content increase in PTN:

New Specimen

Occurrence

281,037 Cum. Total Sem2 ‘07: 36,000

1,117,668 occurrence

Add 100000

The data portal was not designed to record the dates

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Records: Pollinator Data

Portal (http://pollinators.iabin.net/portal/w

elcome.htm)

Sem2’08: 162,542

records from 21 providers

records when new records are added. Therefore we are only able to provide cumulative totals of new records for this tool. Most new data grantees are in a process of digitizing their data, and therefore, those data are not yet available. After digitization we will still have to pass through a data quality assessment.

New Interaction

Records (plant-pollinators):

Mainly through the Pollinator

Data Digitizer http://pollinators.iabin.net/digitizer/

18798 (added July-Dec 09

Sem2 ’09: 18,348 0 Approx. 200

This involves 17,535 records from CEPANN (Brazil), 813 from RAAA (Peru) (both used PDD) and 450 registers from Colombia, not digitized using the PDD

-New Data

Providers: 5 Content Grantees Sem2 ’07: 2

Content Grantees 2 new Content Grantees

Add data from 4 grantees

Thirteen content grantees are currently working with the PTN and are in various stages of digitizing and publishing their pollinator occurrence and plant-pollinator interaction data online.

- Records in Contacts

Database: (http://pollinators.iabin.net/contacts/)

142 Cum. Total Sem1 ‘07: 91 Sem1 ’09: 99

184 cumulative total

Add 10 Records are added to the Pollinator Contacts database on an ad hoc basis as members of the public contact us via the Web site. We also encourage/add larger numbers of records at conferences and workshops.

- Metadata

Records cataloged by NBII:

* The tool used to assess this information is undergoing maintenance and is not available at this time.

Sem2 ’07: 1196 Cum. Total

* The tool used to assess this information is undergoing maintenance and is not available at this time.

Add 3100

This measure of metadata records currently only consists of those records already cataloged by NBII as part of the regular operations of the NBII Pollinators Project. Currently, there are three grants providing pollinator metadata to the catalog. This includes providing metadata for the portal providers, bibliographic references (2400), and images (700).

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5. Number of people trained per year on data creation tools, data quality and use of tools developed by Pollinators Thematic Network (PTN)

Panama Aug. 2009: 20 trainees 2 trainers

Dec ’06: 40 0 20 A PTN training workshop is planned for August 3020.

Sustainability of IABIN - PTN Many conversations have been circulating about the sustainability of the IABIN PTN. Mike Ruggiero, Antonio Saraiva, and Laurie Davies Adams have had several conversations strategizing the best way to continue the life of the PTN. They have had a conference call with the IABIN Coordinator, Arturo Restrepo about potential activities to write grant proposals. Laurie Davies Adams has also asked that Victoria Wojcik, who development work for the Pollinator Partnership, to get involved in finding ways to continue funding the IABIN PTN. Proposals have been submitted to the National Geographic Foundation and the Garfield Foundation. Further proposals are pending with the CS Fund and with Wallace Genetic. There are two major grant templates that have been created:

1. development of more training, improvement of the digitizer, and increasing data quality

2. development of a pollinator service valuation tool The 12 main priority goals for PTN improvements have been identified as:

1. Dataset training 2. Automate digitization from Excel 3. Farmer PDF 4. Decision tool for policy makers 5. Wildlife tool 6. Increase number of contacts in the Contacts Database 7. PTN network improvement and sustainability 8. Enrich data 9. New systems 10. data quality 11. Country technology capacity building 12. Online keys and checklists

Results As a result of our work this semester, the IABIN Pollinator Thematic Network team has made major strides in the development of the digitalization tool and portal. Please visit http://pollinators.iabin.net/ to see the most up-to-date progress.

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Lessons Learned, Problems and Possible Solutions

The Pollinator Thematic Network meets monthly for two hours. Extensive conference call notes are taken and action items are highlighted for each conference period. We consistently deliver our work product in a timely manner and put a lot of hard work into collaborating with partners in 3 different time zones and two different native languages. We have found that various forms of communications cannot always be relied upon. Emails are not transferable, teleconference call numbers are unclear, documents and attachments cannot be opened, etc. We have tried to quell the communication problems by using the on-line community at my.nbii.gov to upload documents and WebEx (shared desktops) is used in addition to our conference calls. Additionally, there is no more funding for this project, and we are relying on in-kind hours. It is difficult to keep the momentum going without financial support.

2.2.5 Protected Areas TN (PATN) Activities in the period of January – June 2010 of the IABIN PATN project execution focused on the improvement of protected areas (PA) data contained in the PATN database as well as the development of standards, protocols and tools for data management and update. Activities also focused on optimising and promoting access and exchange of protected areas data through the development and promotion of the new PATN web portal and database as well as through the development of a data management generic tool and web service. The following activities were undertaken by the PATN during this period: Activity 1.3: Review of the IABIN PATN data structure and data management standards and

protocols: The PATN has produced a review of the PATN data structure and the PATN data management standards and protocols, which was proposed by the previous PATN Coordination institution. Based on this review, the new IABIN Protected Areas Thematic Network data submission standards, minimum data fields and metadata standards were developed. Those aim to be comprehensive, practical and to standardise the information collected on protected areas. Achieving a common standard to allow the sharing of protected areas data is a key principle of the IABIN PATN and the WDPA, with the ultimate aim of compiling a regionally and globally complete and accurate dataset for protected areas. Activity 1.4: Generate and update the PATN database: The PATN is currently developing and updating a PATN database, which will allow users to query and download data according to their particular site on areas of interest and also provides a mechanism where authorized data providers can submit information. This can be made by uploading their protected areas dataset on line, by ftp or automatically via web service. Note: this activity will be finalised by Month 12 of the Coordinating Institution Transfer Agreement Activity 1.5: Develop an IABIN PATN Web Service: In order to facilitate the exchange of data between the PATN’s and other protected areas databases, the PATN is currently developing, in partnership with the Ministry of Environment of Brazil; a web service that will be used to link the PATN database and WDPA to countries protected areas databases. Note: this activity will be finalised by Month 7 of the Coordinating Institution Transfer Agreement

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Activity 1.6: Develop and deploy a PATN data management generic tool: The PATN is currently working on the production of a generic data management tool which will be provided to those IABIN countries who express their interest in adopting it as their official data management tool. In order to help countries to adapt the tool to their specific needs and to be able to use it, the PATN will produce manuals specifying the technical requirements for installation and use of the tool, as well as describing the procedures in case adaptation is required. Note: this activity will be finalised by Month 7

Activity 2.4: Redevelopment of IABIN PATN Web Portal: A new and interactive PATN web portal has been developed by adapting the WDPA interface into the PATN context. The PATN web portal is accessible at www.iabinpatn.org

By building on the WDPA technology, the PATN Portal allows users to explore and visualize protected areas through our map viewers as well as to download various data formats and statistics maps. In the upcoming months, this portal will be improved to allow authorized data providers to upload their protected areas data. Relevant materials and publications related to the PATN have been made available through this portal allowing users to obtain further information on the network and its activities

Upcoming Efforts

In order to optimise and promote access and exchange of protected areas data, the PATN will be working during the upcoming semester on the development of a PATN data management generic tool, which could be used by those countries that lack PA data management systems. This tool will be developed using open source software and will be fully compatible with the PATN and WDPA databases, allowing the automatic data flow.

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The PATN will also work on the generation and maintenance of the PATN database, which will build on the existing WDPA technology. A webservice will be also developed and disseminated within the region in order to facilitate the automatic exchange of data between the PATN’s and other protected areas databases.

Data Content Grants

In September 2008, the PATN distributed a request for proposals in order to support countries on the achievement on the following objectives:

1. To improve and develop technical capacity of individual IABIN countries, when appropriate, to collect and manage their protected areas data in a way that meets their specific needs and context;

2. To help develop or improve, when appropriate, individual country’s protected areas data management systems;

3. To update the data available at the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) with highest quality official protected areas data available.

4. To develop and implement a sustainable strategy in order to periodically update the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

In 2010 eight (08) data content grants are currently being negotiated or implemented by the following countries:

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The status of all PATN data content grants is as follows:

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PATN Indicator Measuring Matrix

Indicator

Actual—

1st

Semester,

2010

Baseline

Last

Semester’s

actual (Jun-

Dec 2009)

Target—2010

Summary Comments

1. Increase of Visits to the portal of PATN

300 visits per day

200 visits per day

200 visits 1000 visits per day

There has been a slight increase in growth mainly driven from Google searches

4. Data and metadata content increase in the PATN increases :

3 countries updated totaling 15000 protected areas

10 countries updated

n/a 20 countries updated

The first 6 months have been focused on finding and negotiating with countries. Most data updates will occur in the 2nd half of the year.

5. Number of people trained per year on data creation tools, data quality and use of tools developed by PATN

n/a n/a n/a 1 country representative per country

Tools will be used in the 2nd half of the year.

SUMMARY COMPONENTS 1 AND COMPONENT 2

Thematic Network Visits (average

visits/month)

Records (total at Jun

2009) Trained People

IABIN Web 1197 N/A N/A

Catalog 1277 200,000 27

SSTN (Specimens) 1831 3,461,304

SSTN (Species) 1003 3,784

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I3N 463 17,732 675

PTN (Specimens) 398 1,048,024

PTN (Interaction) 340 17,534 128

PATN 856 23,530 38

ETN 680 1,925 141

Total 974 4,773,833 1047

3. COMPONENT 3: TOOLS FOR DECISION-MAKING

The following four sub-projects for the development of value added tools were selected to receive funding through IABIN’s Component 3 and are under different stages of implementation: 3.1 Project Title: Developing the Functionality of the IABIN Ecosystems Thematic Network

(ETN) Database Institution: NatureServe Funding: US$49,971.00

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Purpose: The purpose of this project is to make of the ETN Dataset a functional and relational map database that support comprehensive information about ecosystems of the Americas, facilitates the cross referencing between classifications, provides ecosystems distribution maps at different levels of resolution, informs about the conservation status of the ecosystems, and relates subsets of its data to other IABIN thematic network databases, all this through a web interface that is user friendly for both, data providers and information users. Project status, milestones and achievements: The project has achieved a 70% of progress based on the activities accomplished thus far. The spreadsheets for the migration of US Terrestrial Ecological Systems data from the NatureServe databases to the ETN databases are almost completed and by February the data of about 700 ecosystems will be populated in the ETN database, complementing with the US component, the reference classification of Latin America and the Caribbean that currently exist in the ETN. The map viewer tool is functional for South America terrestrial ecosystems maps by representing the reference classification and some national maps that the countries have used to enter the national classifications in the ETN standard format, have a look at http://gg.usm.edu/raber/iabin/ and http://gg.usm.edu/CA_Ecosystems Query options have been developed to customize the outputs of the ETN data base according to the users thematic and geographic interest. The following screenshots show the types of queries that are already functional, but we are working with the ETN programmer on additional queries and printable reports to improve the user interface of the ETN database. One of the queries developed is the crosswalk among any two terrestrial ecosystems classifications that have been entered in the database. The crosswalk script for this database already exists and can be tested, but we are in the process of finetuning the migration of important sets of data, such as the US ecosystems and the World Bank Central American Ecosystems map, in order to run the crosswalk script again among all the entries in the terrestrial ecosystems database http://iabin.sunsite.utk.edu/ecosystems/FormatoEstandar/reptipovegeecosistema.php Regarding the information about the conservation status of ecosystems, we have started a conversation with the lead of the IUCN Ad hoc Working Group for the Development of Red List Categories and Criteria for Ecosystems in order to coordinate and align our objectives and work

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in this front with that of this group. Thus far we are planning a first workshop for the beginning of March to bring together members of this Ad hoc Group and IABIN ETN collaborators and coordinators to outline the common ground and identify immediate next steps.

Main challenges for next semester and any pending activities: One of the main challenges for the next semester is to finish the United States and Central America ecosystems data and maps preparation to be added through the Map Viewer Tool. Also, the new design of the ETN user interface will be soon available. 3.2 Project Title: Internet-Based GIS Ecosystem Assessment and Reporting Tool for

Conservation Decision-Making Institution: The Nature Conservancy Funding: US$75,000 Purpose: The tool developed for this project demonstrates how data from the Ecosystems and Protected Area Thematic Networks can be effectively integrated and used in the decision making process to guide and enhance environmental management decisions. The principal outcome of this project was the development of a web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) Ecosystem Assessment and Reporting (EAR) Tool for conservation decision-making. The tool can be accessed either through an internet browser or executed on a local machine using GIS software, providing a user-friendly “manager’s dashboard” approach for querying current spatial information on ecosystem condition, socioeconomic threat to these ecosystem, and protected area management status. By integrating biodiversity, socioeconomic and protected area datasets, the Ecosystem Assessment and Reporting Tool provides a simple, but powerful interface designed to answer questions such as “Which ecosystems are least protected?” “Of these ecosystems, where and how do we need to improve management?” and “Where are the opportunities to most efficiently reduce threats to these ecosystems?” This decision-support tool takes advantage of powerful new internet-based GIS technologies that go beyond traditional desktop GIS functionality, and have been designed using open advanced analysis techniques in a dynamic and easy-to-use web interface.

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By integrating data from the Ecosystems and Protected Area Thematic Networks that have been assigned biodiversity, threat, and management status, conservation decision-makers are able to cross-query ecosystems/species with protected area information, then report back spatial and tabular results formatted using user-defined categories on the condition and vulnerability of selected ecosystems. This information can then be used by conservation decision-makers to develop focused and prioritized strategies, effectively allocating resources and activities to the most appropriate places in order to achieve maximum results www.eartool.org

Project status, milestones and achievements: The development of this tool has been completed. TNC completed the translation of the user manual into Spanish http://gg.usm.edu/EAR/tutorial.htm Primary impacts of this tool include: • Integration of data from Ecosystems and Protected Area Thematic Network databases:

The EAR tool integrates ecosystem, threat, and protected area data and provides an interactive and user-friendly approach to identify conservation gaps, prioritizing conservation actions. In addition, the tool has been specifically designed to integrate and take advantage of TNC’s ecoregional datasets and methods for measuring effective

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conservation. To date, TNC has completed over 140 freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecoregional assessments and new assessments are continually being completed. These ecoregional assessments provide a range of useful data that can be used in the EAR tool.

• Tools for visualization and analysis of Ecosystem and Protected Area TN data and

information: Having been built using new Internet-based GIS technology, the EAR tool can be linked to existing GIS datasets, designed with flexibility, scalability, and diversification in mind. By integrating existing TNC ecoregional data with IABIN’s Ecosystems and Protected Area Thematic Networks datasets, the tool maximizes the utility of these data by providing users with advanced query and visualization functions. Users are able to visualize the current status of each ecosystem patch by combining the three measures, obtaining spatial and tabular answers to questions such as: What is the current protection status of each ecosystem? How close are we to meeting conservation goals, what percentage has been achieved? If I need additional hectares to reach my goal, where are the most suitable areas to implement a protection strategy? Using ESRI’s ArcGIS Server™ technology, users are able to query large distributed GIS databases, execute advanced GIS functions, and view model results via an internet browser or other thin clients (e.g. ArcExplorer).

• Utilize tool output to develop scenarios and plans of conservation action for decision

makers: Effective conservation decisions often require up-to-date information on the viability of an ecosystem, the level of socio-economic threat to that ecosystem, and the actual protected area management that is being implemented on the ground. These types of information are often used to help policy and environmental managers set conservation priorities, respond to critical needs in an effective manner, and distribute limited resources efficiently. The EAR tool provides decision-makers crucial direction by providing spatial information on the most appropriate places to do conservation work and indicate what actions are needed to improve biodiversity conservation for each ecosystem by explicitly addressing the following questions: Where is biodiversity reasonably secure and expected to persist? What are the gaps in biodiversity protection and threat abatement? Where are there opportunities to expand and enhance biodiversity protection? What progress are we making as a result of conservation actions, and what biodiversity has been lost?

• Methodology employed and activities carried out to achieve the planned products

With ongoing development of IABIN’s Ecosystem and Protected Area TN databases, there exists tremendous opportunities to leverage these databases with TNC’s ecoregional assessment databases to further advance biodiversity protection. The EAR tool takes advantage of new and powerful Internet-based GIS technology that integrates viability, threat, and conservation management status, providing integration results in easily digestible maps and reports. These maps and reports can be generated dynamically from the tool, providing a current conservation action prioritization for a given area or ecosystem. In summary, key activities carried out during this project include: (i)Design of data model that integrates TNC’s ecoregional assessment products with the ecosystem and protected area standard format databases into a suitable and efficient framework for internet-based GIS analysis and reporting; (ii) Implementation

and testing of data model – several terrestrial and marine ecoregional datasets throughout Mesoamerica and the Caribbean have been chosen to prototype and test the

37

data model; (iii) Hardware setup and loading of supporting database - Consolidation of database onto a robust server with high-speed internet connection and access to IABIN’s existing distributed databases (iv) Design of tool and output products - Design of an ArcGIS Server-based tool and method for creating output products compatible with the data model and useful for decision-makers. The tool has been designed primarily for use by non-GIS people who have little GIS technology training. When using GIS data from the Ecosystems and Protected Area TNC databases, users can perform complex spatial queries and receive back maps and reports indicating model results; (v) Implementation

and testing of tool (vi) Delivery of final report and tool with accompanying user

manual.

3.3 Project Title: Sistema para el modelado de escenarios de acciones de desarrollo o posibles amenazas a la biodiversidad Institution: Asociación Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) Funding: US$107,298 Purpose: Given the large number of variables involved and the high sensitivity of populations to changes in variables such as climate, infrastructure development, invasion of species, etc, an analytical model to predict the impact of those changes in a population are practically impossible. Thus, this project proposes the development of an interactive, user-friendly and modular system that integrates biotic and abiotic data to visualize and model scenarios for potential threats and leads to better biodiversity resources management. The system is highly interactive to facilitate experimentation with causal variables and their effects, user-friendly to make more appealing to decision makers and modular so that it can be implemented as a stand alone system or as part of the SSTN portal. The project articulates the following types of activities: software development, application of the resulting software to a pilot case in Costa Rica, and an evaluation by experienced potential users. The target beneficiaries are decision makers that define policies and concrete biodiversity conservation actions.

Description of the System: The tool allows users to select a specific geographic area, and the system will gather maps potentially generated from other information sources for the segment you want to get information with known distributions. For this end, the database must be updated in advanced with the required information, using an interface mechanism that can be configured for the user depending on his criteria to rate the categories to choose from. Based on this information, the system executed a difficult analysis and generates the corresponding risk maps for the involved species.

The interface of the system is multilingual. In other words, the administrator will only have to translate the extern text files and the interface can be configured for a new language. The initial system is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. The software operates in a Web environment and will be available through the SSTN, IABIN and others related websites. The following figure shows the structure of the system for a better understanding.

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3.4 Project Title: Sistema para la toma de decisiones con base en categorías de conservación y usos de la biodiversidad. Institution: Asociación Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) Funding: US$75,000 Purpose: To develop and document an open source and bilingual (English and Spanish) Software tool, which facilitates the geo spatial and statistic analysis of biodiversity information from species, specimens, conservation categories and biodiversity uses, to support at least three kinds of decision making: Scientifics (e.g. determination of collection areas), conservation (e.g. establishment of protected areas) and administrative (e.g. wood extraction ratifications) decisions. Likewise, this tool will take advantage of the new Ara’s functionality developed by the SSTN, in order to promote and encourage greater use of species and specimens information digitalization processes. Finally, this tool will prove and illustrate the utility of the new model through the development of a case study: Analysis of Costa Rica PAS’s Limits and potential of other areas potential to be converted into PAS based on the distribution of threaten plants in Costa Rica and its categories of use. Project status, milestones and achievements: The development of this system has passed the analysis and design stages, as well as the stage to collect information that must be converted into the databases which will be available for the user’s tests. As stated in the proposal, the development of this system consists not only on providing the tool for the users to use with their own data, but accompanied with to data bases. The first is a database about documented uses through bibliographic references. The second one is a database about threatened plant species according to the established list of each country in Central America.

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As of December 2009, the tool has been designed and the first version (stand alone) it’s being implemented. A delay of two or three months is estimated in the implementation of the tool due to the unanticipated complexity of the system. Nevertheless, the data collection process has been concluded and the construction of the databases will be initiated in February of the present year. The graph below shows an example of the results of the analysis module produced under this tool.

The biodiversity informatics matrix was completed that shows links to all websites that house biodiversity data. HTTP://WWW.OAS.ORG/DSD/IABIN/COMPONENT%203V2/3RDRFPV2.HTM

4. COMPONENT 4: SUSTAINABILITY OF IABIN 4.1. Outreach and Communications Work is underway to sponsor a CBD COP event Japan in October, 2010. The OAS Ministerial on Sustainable Development Meeting in October 2010 in the Dominican Republic is an excellent opportunity for IABIN outreach. IABIN is mentioned in para 29. To

support coordination in the management of migratory species, ecosystem connectivity, and ecosystem-

based management of national parks and equivalent protected areas in border areas, using value added

information, such as that generated by the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN), the

Western Hemisphere Migratory Species Initiative (WHMSI), and the Regional Strategy for the

Conservation and Sustainable Use of High Andean Wetlands, as well as he establishment and development

of biological corridors. More information can be found at: http://www.oas.org/dsd/MinisterialMeeting/SecondMeetingSustainableDevelopment_e.htm

An IABIN marketing strategy was developed and is being refined and will be submitted to the Council upon completion.

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Additionally the meeting discussed the possibility of an IEC/Coordinating Institution meeting in February 2011 that might be held at INbio in Costa Rica. The IEC has been informed of this proposed meeting. 4.2 TNs Sustainability

The IABIN Technical Working Group Meeting was held in Knoxville, Tennessee, organized by USGS and GS/OAS. Information technology representatives from the Coordinating Institutions and component #3 funded projects met with the objective to review status of tools/applications, data content grants, (http://www.oas.org/dsd/IABIN/Component2.htm ), and value added products, that are being financed under Component #3 http://int.usde.oas.org/IABIN/Component%203v2/Component3v2.htm . The overall goal was to begin to get better coordination between the Thematic Networks so that data from species/specimens, pollinators, invasive species, protected areas, and ecosystems could be uploaded on a geospatial platform (DataBasin -- http://databasin.org) and manipulated to facilitate research on climate change, ecosystems services, and carbon sequestration potential for possible carbon offset projects (as examples) that might be further explored through a follow up GEF project for which you have received DRAFT copies for your review. Contacts with both CAF, CCAD, and IDB will be made to coordinate related geospatial activities. The group reviewed the GEF 2 draft outline that has the objective to improve and enable updated and integrated biodiversity information to support informed decisions for sustainable conservation and resources management for countries in the Americas. 4.3 Partnership and Communications

During this period partnerships with several institutions were strengthened that help support development of the different Thematic Networks. In addition, a strong collaboration has been forged with the American Association of Geographers (AAG), Andean Development Corporation (CAF), and USGS to advance technical programs and fundraising activities for the development of the network. 4.4 Fund Raising

The Andes Amazon Protected Areas Database, a project financed by the Gordon and Betty (GBMF) and executed by the Department of Sustainable Development at the Organization of American States (OAS-DSD), was completed. The project developed an information system to keep a public online database with information about the status of the protected areas in the Andes – Amazon basin region. This system should be one of the tools for decision makers and investors in conservation and represent the official version of the governmental agencies responsible for the administration of the areas. http://www.oas.org/dsd/AAPAD2/AAPAD2.htm

The following proposals are submitted or in development:

Donor Theme

Amount

requested Status

Google.org protected areas 2,140,000 no response

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Howard G Buffett Foundation

vulnerability atlas (informatics for sustainable development) 1,260,000

Sent 8/18/2010 Rejected

German Climate Fund vulnerability atlas (emphasis on climate vulnerability assessment) 1,545,000

Sent in early 2010 -- rejected

Moore Foundation Climate Adaptation Monitoring, Evaluation, and Decision Support 800,000 to be sent

Tinker Foundation capacity building - training decision-makers in use of IABIN 80,000 Sent 8/18/2010

Wallace Global Fund awareness building-outreach - use of IABIN for IIRSA planning 80,000 Sent 8/18/2010

Fundacion Biodiversidad

Inter American Biodiversity Institute feasibility study/pilot distance learning project 120,000 (euros) to be sent

German Climate Fund II

REDD-GAP integration of carbon into biodiversity gap analysis to pinpoint areas with high carbon and biodiversity values ~@ 1,200,000

under development

JRS Biodiversity Foundation

The proposal “Enhancing Knowledge for Establishing Ecosystem Conservation Priorities in the Neotropics by Integrating Biodiversity and Geospatial Data” was approved in December 2007 for US$200K. The first installment of $120,000 was received in February 2008. In late 2008, INBio was identified as the Principal Investigator for this project. In June of 2009 JRS gave the final go ahead to the current version of the project and implementation began in late 2009. In the first half of 2010, the project:

a. Completed taxonomic updates of 18,999 Central American plant species and compiled a list of these plants. b. Field Museum data digitizing & georeferencing: four staff from the following Herbaria: Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Museo de Historia Natural de El Salvador, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua and Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, invested two months at the Field Museum, Chicago. Based on a list of Wild Relatives of Cultivated Plants, they digitized 6 255 specimens. c. In-country data digitizing & georeferencing--INBio offered a short refresher course in georeferencing in June/July 2010 with staff from Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, and georeferencing at each herbaria will continue in the second semester of 2010.

4. The Western Hemisphere Migratory Species Initiative (WHMSI) is building country capacity to conserve and manage migratory wildlife. It improves hemispheric communication on conservation issues of common interest, provides training in priority areas,

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strengthens the exchange of information needed for informed decision-making, and provides a forum to address emerging issues such as new threats to migratory species, or the connections between wildlife disease and human diseases.

Projects funded under WHMSI 3 - 2010

Capacity Building for the Cooperation in Conservation:

Western Hemisphere Migratory Species Initiative (WHMSI)

No. Institution Country Title of the Proposal WHMSI Funding

Co finance Funding

1

Consejo Nacional de Areas

Protegidas -CONAP

Guatemala

Estudio sobre la migracion de ballenas jorobadas (Megaptera novaeangliae) en el Oeste del Pacifico de Guatemala

$22,965.23 $86,505

2 Asociacion GUYRA Paraguay Creando Capacidades para Unir Iniciativas de Conservacion de Aves Migratorias de Pastizales

$25,500 $31,234

3

Society for the Conservation and

Study of Caribbean Birds

Jamaica

Monitoring Land Birds in Caribbean Protected Areas for Adaptive Management and Public Education

$26,000 $29,000

4 World Wild Fund

(WWF) United States

“Incorporating climate adaptation into marine turtle conservation: capacity strengthening for planning and implementation”

$25,999 $22,082

5 American Bird Conservancy

United States

Training Local Stakeholders in Reforestation and the Managament of Land Neotropical Migrants in Colombia, Nicaragua, and Peru.

$16,100 $245,612

$116,564 $414,433

5. COMPONENT 5: PROJECT ADMINISTRATION 5.1 IABIN Financing

From Project inception to June 2010, the project has disbursed $4,301,278.07 or 72% of the total Budget. In the 2010 AOP, IABIN projected disbursements of up to $1,009,921 for the period of January through June 2010. Even though, actual disbursement of funds amounted to $365,421.76 overall the level of disbursements has increased through the life of the project.

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The breakdown of disbursements by component show that the greatest difference between planned and actual disbursements is in Components 2 and 3 given the time required to negotiate, approve and sign the Sub-Project Agreements under said components; the performance of the other components is as follows:

(i) Component 1: Disbursements totaled 28% of the planned amount for the first semester of 2010. The coordinating institutions are implementing most of their activities on schedule as programmed in their respective operating plans; Most of them, specially the SSTN and ETN have already completed most of their programmed activities under component one except in the case of the Protected Areas Thematic Network where UNEP/WCMC was selected as the new Coordinating Institution. The second disbursement was programmed for the term of this report but will not be completed until the second semester of 2010.

(ii) Component 2: Disbursements in this component increased significantly compared to

previous semesters and totaled 39% of the planned amount for the first semester of 2010. During this period the GS/OAS continued negotiated the terms and conditions of GS/OAS administrative and legal procedures with the recipients of the last grants awarded through IABIN. This process has taken several months for many institutions since some of grantees don’t have a legal personality or don’t have the necessary accounting system. In addition, these institutions also have to send the Sub-Project Agreements for the review and approval of their own Legal Department causing delays in the signature of the Agreements and in the disbursement of the first payment. As set in the grant agreements, most of the institutions require approximately 40% of the grant amount to be disbursed upon signature while the remaining balance is paid upon submission of satisfactory performance on their deliverables. Approximately 74 data content grants Agreements have been signed and are in progress. In addition almost 39 projects have been completed and 11 Agreements are currently under negotiation with the corresponding institutions.

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Therefore the GS/OAS expects to continue disbursing the largest portion of the data content grants funds in the second semester of 2010.

(iii) Component 3: Disbursements totaled 41% of the planned amount for the first semester

of 2010. After signing the 3rd Amendment to the GEF Trust Fund Agreement required in order to include a new procurement category and agreeing on the Sub Grant Agreement model with the World Bank, the GS/OAS finally signed the first five sub-projects for the development of value added tools for decision making. Component 3 projects are underway and the first tool was recently sent to the IABIN Council for their review and comment. One more agreement will be signed in the second semester of 2010. The GS/OAS expects to continue disbursing a large amount of funds in the second semester of 2010.

(iv) Component 4: Disbursements totaled 54% of the planned amount for the first

semester of 2010 corresponding in great part to the preparation of the VI IABIN Council Meeting held in the second semester of 2009 and the hiring of the consultant in the role of IABIN Coordinator.

(v) Component 5: Disbursements totaled 54% of the planned amount for the first semester

of 2010. Execution level for the period January through June 2010:

The Table below shows that from the project inception through June 2010, IABIN has disbursed 72% of the total funds. During the period of July through December 2010, IABIN is expected to disburse $872,231.69, which represents 15% of the total funds of the project.

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Total Funds disbursed by Components

5.2 IABIN Co-Financing

The IABIN partner organizations, Coordinating Institutions and grantees funded under the IABIN Content Development Program for Data Creation submitted their co-financing information for the period January through June 2010; the Table below shows that IABIN financing from GEF and co-financing amounted to a total of $1,423,704.96 for this period.

Table 7: Core and non core Parallel Financing

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Annex 1 - List of Acronyms

AOP = Annual Operating Plan CABI = Intergovernmental Organization. Invasive Species is one of its three key scientific areas for international development that works toward reducing the spread and impact of invasive species throughout the world. CI = Coordinating Institution CONABIO = Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad. ECS = Ecosystem Class Standard ENBI = European Network for Biodiversity Information ETN = Ecosystem Thematic Network FP = Focal Point FAO = Food and Agriculture Organization GBIF = Global Biodiversity Information Facility SBSTTA = Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice

GISP = Global Invasive Species Programme

GISIN = Global Invasive Species Information Network

IAS = Invasive Alien Species I3N = Invasive Information Network IEC = IABIN Executive Committee IUCN = The World Conservation Union JICA = Japan International Cooperation Agency LAA/USP = Laboratório de Automação Agrícola da Escola Politécnica da University of São Paulo NBII = National Biological Information Infrastructure PAII = Portal de Acceso Integrado a Información de Especies y Especímenes PATN = Protected Areas Thematic Network PATWG = Protected Areas Technical Working Group PAIGH = Pan American Institute of Geography and History

PIP = Project Implementation Plan PP = Procurement Plan PTN = Pollinators Thematic Network REMIB = The World Biodiversity Information Network SAIC = Science and Application Information Systems SICAMAI = Sistema de Captura y Manejo de Información de Especies y Especímenes STRI = Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute SSTN = Species and Specimens Thematic Network TN =Thematic Network TWG = Thematic Working Group TNC = The Nature Conservancy UDDI = Universal Description, Discovery and Integration UNEP = United Nations Environment Program

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Annex 2: Distribution of Data Content Creation Grants by Thematic Network and Country

Graph 1: Data Content Grants – Country Participation from Project Inception to December

2009