"The expertise to create databases is in short supply in Africa; the JRS Foundation is assisting science in very meaningful ways," he says.
The ground-breaking work of the Ghana-based institute is one of 17 JRS-supported projects to be showcased at the e-Biosphere 09 Conference in London June 1-3 (www.e-biosphere09.org), hosted by the Natural History Museum. Co-sponsored by the Encyclopedia of Life and 12 other leading institutions, the event is an exposition of the latest biology-related informatics tools and technologies, as well as their potential linkages and applications.
JRS Board President James L. Edwards, Executive Director of the Encyclopedia of Life, based at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, says biodiversity information is often compiled for diverse purposes and stored in unique databases using different formats, making the task of effectively using it cumbersome and time-consuming.
The JRS Foundation works to aggregate, digitize, synthesize and make easily available important biodiversity information from developing countries that is often inaccessible to potential users, including conservation managers, policy makers and the public.
"Earth's plant and animal species are declining at an alarming rate. An estimated 50,000 species disappear every year, mostly due to human impacts population growth, industrial development, pollution and climate change," says Dr. Edwards.
"Efforts to stabilize and reverse this trend are hampered by biodiversity knowledge banks that are incomplete, fragmented and not easily accessible to those who need them to set environmental priorities or create informed policies and decisions. In addition, biodiversity databases often cannot share information with each other due to incompatible formats."
"Though endowed only in 2004, the JRS Foundation has already established itself as an important partner of developing-country scientist
|Contact: Terry Collins|
JRS Biodiversity Foundation