Conference report by the NBN Trust
A large and diverse group of people gathered on Saturday 21st March 2015 at the Ulster Museum in Belfast to celebrate twenty years of CEDaR – the Centre for Environmental Data and Recording. It was a day packed with excellent speakers from all walks of life in Northern Ireland and the UK. Some of the take home messages were that:
- CEDaR has made an important contribution to the understanding of biodiversity in Northern Ireland over the last 20 years.
- There are some world class citizen-led and volunteer programmes in Northern Ireland in terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments.
- Joined up, shared and visible biological data will help immensely with environmental decision-making, research and policy development. Data that is hidden or not shared creates problems for invasive species management, for research, and for conservation management and restoration.
- Large amounts of legacy data exist that should be mobilised (e.g., museum data).
- Engagement of younger generations is critical, but we also need to grow the national network of recorders and experts through motivation and feedback.
- The impact of technology on the biological recording industry has been immense, and it is unlikely to ever stop evolving (e.g., digital photography) – keeping up can be a challenge.
- Online tools are here to stay and will be the principal method for biological data recording in the future.
- Succession planning is needed if we have any chance to maintain or even increase our capacity.
- Our recording effort is lopsided and geographically challenged. We must plug data gaps.
- We must assess and account for search effort and identify certainty and bias. That is, moving towards more structured monitoring will reap rewards.
- We need to become better at engagement. There are tremendous opportunities for engaging audiences in learning and biological recording.
- Data capture and organisational effort is still in silos, true partnership is rare as each taxon takes on a programme of data collection.
- Protected sites, locally, nationally and throughout Europe, incapable of dealing with environmental changes that are upon us. Greater landscape scale partnership is needed
During the day, delegates were able to view the excellent new display at the Ulster Museum that tells the story of CEDaR and biological recording in Northern Ireland (see images). This display is well worth a look if you are in Belfast. Thanks to the CEDaR team for organising an excellent conference to celebrate their first twenty years. Here’s to the next twenty!
