*Research Fortnight is the only UK publication that connects research to funding and policymaking. John Sawyer was recently asked to write a piece for it.
The issue was published on 28th January 2015 and the article can be downloaded here
Here is a snippet to entice you to read more:
“Biological records—observations of species or ecosystems at a particular place and time—have a wide range of uses.
They can help us to understand and adapt to climate change, manage invasive pest species, improve conservation and achieve the ecological restoration and rewilding of degraded habitats.
In town planning alone, they can be used in flood management regimes, in offsets—where habitat is created to compensate for damage elsewhere—and in the evaluation of natural capital and ecosystem services such as pollination. And we can also use them to monitor the environment and track long term changes.
But the UK’s biological records are not working as hard as they could, which is down to uncertainty about their quality and a lack of accessibility and openness.
The NBN is launching a draft strategy for the next five years that we hope will turn the UK’s biodiversity databases into a treasure trove rather than a hoard. The aim is to do this by changing how data are collected, handled, used and valued, based on five strategic priorities”.