As the last few BioBlitz events of 2017 are winding down it’s time to reflect on the season just passed and look ahead to the next steps for BioBlitz. With that in mind, the National BioBlitz Network would like to hear your thoughts on the new toolkit “Let’s Talk About Data” as well as key learning points from your events.
Feeding into the new European BioBlitz Network
The European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) has founded the BioBlitz Task & Finish group to facilitate the establishment of a Europe-wide network of BioBlitz organisers. This initiative is supported by the Horizon 2020 project Doing It Together Science (DITOs), which provides opportunities to foster the sharing of good practice and to build capacity for the BioBlitz methodology, through the implementation of activities and events run in collaboration with the wide community of Citizen Science stakeholders in Europe, including ECSA members and beyond.
Bristol Natural History Consortium act as co-chairs of this group, and have been tasked with sharing the expertise gained from the pioneering members of the UK National BioBlitz Network.
What’s happened so far?
A recent accomplishment was the development of the policy brief “BioBlitzes: Promoting cross border Research and collaborative Practices for Biodiversity Conservation”, which has been part of this collaborative process bringing together organisers from around the world.
What do we want to do next?
Among other objectives, we would like to map current BioBlitz events in Europe on the DITOs event platform and in turn gather evidence of good practice and key achievements of the BioBlitz methodology. Information will be available for the Citizen Science community and will help informing stakeholders on the value of this methodology.
Where we need your help
If you have run a BioBlitz in 2017, we’d really encourage you to contribute to this objective and be part of this initiative, by completing a short questionnaire that will recap key aspects and outcomes of your BioBlitz.
Thank you for supporting our effort to further develop BioBlitz events in Europe!
For more info please get in touch with Matt Postles and Gaia Agnello.
Toolkit Review: How useful is this? How useful could it be?
Earlier in the summer we published a new toolkit and framework document for communicating about data pathways with the aim of supporting more effective data collection and processing by new and existing recorders. We used identifiable human stories to recognise the most appropriate data pathways for different ‘types’ of recorders.
Whether you used the toolkit and/or framework to help shape your communications and activities or this is the first you are hearing about it, we’d love to know what you think of the toolkit by answering just 3 questions.
Thanks to everyone from Matt and the team at Bristol Natural History Consortium