This project comprises the Flemish contribution to Lifewatch.eu: a Flemish marine, terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity observatory, models and data systems, including a central species information backbone for LifeWatch.
LifeWatch was established as part of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure (ESFRI). It is a distributed virtual laboratory and will be used for biodiversity research, for climatological and environmental impact studies, to support the development of ecosystem services and to provide information for policy makers in Europe. This large European infrastructure will consist of several biodiversity observatories, databases, web services and modeling tools. It will be integrating the existing systems, upgrading them were possible and developing new systems where needed.
The construction of the LifeWatch infrastructure started in January 2012. As the LifeWatch European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) is being shaped, several of the participating countries started constructing the central and regional components.
Flanders is contributing to the central LifeWatch components with a taxonomic backbone, and to the regional components with marine, terrestrial and freshwater observatories, several biodiversity data systems, web services and models. The Flemish contributions to the LifeWatch infrastructure will be coordinated by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). |
