Report of the Emodnet Biology Second General Meeting: 17-18.09
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Report of the EMODnet Biology Second General Meeting: 17-18.09.2014, Horta, Azores Authors: Stefanie Dekeyzer, Dan Lear, Leen Vandepitte, Sarah Faulwetter, Peter Herman & Simon Claus All presentations available at: http://www.emodnet-biology.eu/project/documents/Meetings/ Meeting Participants 1.Costello Mark Auckland University 2. Rytter David BIOS-AU 3. Josefson Alf BIOS-AU 4. Stolte Willem Deltares 5. Ó Tuama Éamonn GBIF 6. Faulwetter Sarah HCMR 7. Carlos Pinto ICES 8. Holdsworth Neil ICES 9. Huguet Antoine IFREMER 10. Debray Noëlie IFREMER 11. Van Hoey Gert ILVO 12. Catarino Diana IMAR/DOP 13. Ostrem Ann Kristin IMR 14. Kraśniewski Wojciech IMWM-NRI 15. Thijsse Peter MARIS 16. Langmead Olivia MBA 16. Lear Dan MBA 17. Herman Peter NIOZ 18. Beauchard Olivier NIOZ 19. Lipizer Marina OGS 20. Pesant Stéphane PANGAEA 21. McQuatters- Gollop Abigail SAHFOS 22. Skinner Jennifer SAHFOS 23. Stromberg Patrik SMHI 24. Andreasson Arnold SMHI 25. Beckers Jean-Marie ULg 26. Claus Simon VLIZ 27. Vandepitte Leen VLIZ 28. Souza Dias Francisco VLIZ 29. Dekeyzer Stefanie VLIZ 30. Deneudt Klaas VLIZ 31. Tyberghein Lennert VLIZ 32. Vanhoorne Bart VLIZ 2 | Page Wednesday 17 September 2014 Welcome to IMAR (H. Silva, Director IMAR) Prof. Dr. Helder Silva, director of IMAR (Universidade dos Azores, Departamento De Oceanografia y Pescas) welcomes the participants to Horta and to IMAR. He gives a short overview of the different research themes that are tackled at Horta (deep sea biology, fisheries biology) and wishes all participants a fruitful meeting. Overview WP1: project management; Introduction to meeting and administrative issues (S. Claus) The second phase of the EMODnet Biology project started on August 30th 2013. The EMODnet Biology consortium currently consists of 19 partners and 3 subcontractors. All partners signed the Consortium Agreement. All partners and subcontractors already received the initial payment (30%). Interim payment of 15% will happen upon approval of the year one report. Simon asks for all partners and subcontractors to send the invoices for this 15% interim payment to the EMODnet administration, after acceptance of the first interim report (pending). The Annual Report of year one (reporting period 30.08.2013 – 30.08.2014) was submitted to the European Commission. Several meetings and workshops were organized since the start of EMODnet Biology 2: (1) the Kick-off meeting (11-12 September 2013, VLIZ, Oostende, Belgium), (2) WP5 workshop: Testing and validation methodology for creation of gridded abundance data products (23-24 January 2014, NIOZ, Yerzeke, Netherlands), and (3) WP2 workshop: Discussion of priority functional traits and standard vocabulary for collection traits (12-13 February, Ifremer, Paris, France). Furthermore EMODnet Biology 2 set up several collaborations with HELCOM, DEVOTES, OSPAR Commission, EASIN, LifeWatch, OBIS, WoRMS and MSFD. For year 1 several deliverables were delivered: D2.1 (M6), D2.3 (M6), D3.1 (M6), D4.1 (M9), D5.1 (M12) and D6.1 (M12). D4.2 however was not delivered by M12, but was postponed to year 2. For year 2 several deliverables are scheduled: 2 for WP1, 2 for WP2, 1 for WP4 and 1 for WP5. Furthermore, year 2 holds no deliverables for WP3, but it was suggested to add a deliverable for WP3 by M24. Some highlight products for year 1 are the construction of the World Register of Introduced Marine Species (WRIMS), the gridded data for Marenzellaria as invasive species in the Baltic Sea, and the gridded data of cod (Gadus Morhua) stocks in the North Sea. Regarding the EMODnet Biology data portal, in total 702.976 records from 93 datasets became available through the portal. These datasets were also collected within the framework of ongoing EurOBIS activities. In 2014, the portal had an average of about 1.500 unique visitors per month, and the average data downloads from the portal comes down to about 2 per day. Most data is downloaded for research reasons. 3 | Page Overview WP2: Identification and collection of species, species attributes and species indicator information (D. Lear) The WP2 activities are led by the Marine Biological Association (MBA). Two tasks were identified for WP2. Task 2.1 (Identification of species and species attributes information) has two deliverables: D2.1 by M6 and D2.2 by M18. Task 2.2 (Collection of species attributes information) has 3 deliverables: D2.3 by M6, D2.4 by M24 and D2.5 by M36. For task 2.1, Olivia Langmead gave more information in her presentation. For task 2.2, deliverable D2.3 was achieved: on 12-13 February 2014 a data attributes workshop was organized at Ifremer (Paris) to discuss a standardized vocabulary and prioritize the biological attribute and trait information, in collaboration with WoRMS taxonomic editors). Currently the focus of WP2 is on designing a standardized species attributes vocabulary, which needs to be published by M24 (D2.4). For the standard vocabulary, traits are incorporated from MarLIN/BIOTIC and the pilot projects for collecting trait information from the EMODnet Biology Phase 1: planktonic copepods, planktonic taxa, benthic taxa, sea and coastal birds, macro-algae and introduced species. The vocabulary is using a hierarchical approach and is currently consultable in a Google docs spreadsheet. In the near future it is planned to transfer the vocabulary to a WIKI system, either the Semantic Media WIKI or the Coastal WIKI. During the WP2 breakout session the priority traits paper of Costello et al. (in prep) and further development of the traits hierarchy will be discussed. Question Peter Herman: Will the traits data be mapable? Answer Dan Lear: WP2 is only collecting the data. Making the data mapable is the task of WP3. Question Simon Claus: Is there a follow-up WP2 workshop planned? Answer Dan Lear: A second workshop is definitely useful, but is not planned yet. Overview body size data (S. Dekeyzer) Since body size is the most straightforward trait and does not need specialized terminology, body size will become the first trait to be included in the Aphia database. An overview was given of the body size data collected during the EMODnet Biology Phase I pilot projects, and body size data collected by summer students at VLIZ during summer 2014. After the presentation some discussion arose about the documenting of the body size dimension. Body length is the preferred dimension, but for the birds e.g. body size is documented as wing span, and for the macro-algae often thickness and height is used. This problem could be solved by looking at body length as the 4 | Page main trait, and consider the other body size dimensions (wing span, height, thickness, diameter, etc.) as additional traits. Overview WP3: Data access to marine biological data (L. Vandepitte) The WP3 activities are led by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). The general objective of WP3 is to provide data and metadata on surveys in the water column and on the seabed from the different groups of marine species (phytoplankton, zooplankton, macro-algae, angiosperms, benthos, birds, mammals, reptiles and fish). These databases were identified during the data inventory and gap analysis that was performed during the pilot project of EMODnet Biology and represent Europe’s largest marine biological data collections covering all trophic levels of the marine ecosystem. More specific the WP3 objectives are to (1) Analyze and assess in-depth the usability and fitness for purpose of the different data and databases that will contribute to the project, (2) Decide on the optimal mechanisms for linkage with the EMODnet portal, making maximal use of existing systems, (3) Format the data and perform taxonomic and data standardizations to allow interoperability with the EMODnet biological portal, and (4) Determine the suitability of the data for the creation of the data products and validate the produced data products. WP3 has two deliverables: D3.1 by M6 and D3.2 by M6-36. The goal of D3.1 (M6) was to make an inventory of datasets that will contribute to EMODnet (presence, abundance, biomass, metadata) and to define the data exchange mechanism. In February 2014 the report for D3.1 was submitted. The inventory identified 129 new datasets: 89 have already been described in the metadata catalogue; all will become accessible through the Portal. However, for about 2.3 million distribution records, no indication was given to which group or groups the records belong. A similar analysis will be done once the data are accessible through the EMODnet Biology Portal, and will then provide an updated view. All WP3 partners also indicated their data transfer protocol of choice, i.e. the mechanism through which the data will become accessible through the EMODnet Biology Portal: IPT, SeaDataNet format, OGC (WFS), own web services or a combination of protocols. The goal of D3.2 (M6-36) is to standardize and format all the datasets mentioned under D3.1 so they can be linked with the EMODnet Biology Portal. To allow interoperability, several data formats are possible: OBIS scheme, DarwinCore Occurrence Scheme (IPT) (extension: DwC MeasurementOrFact), Biological data exchange format (BIODEF - SDN), Shape files (OGC compliant), and web services. First focus will be on DarwinCore, through IPT, since the majority of the partners will be using this, it is already in place and functional (cf. OBIS community) and VLIZ is offering support to assist in setting up or hosting an IPT server. Currently (September 2014) the available data includes 614 datasets, 5 | Page 18.3 million distribution records (of which 15.1 million comply with basic QC) and 53.101 species names linked to WoRMS (of which 23.309 are accepted species). To allow further interoperability an extension of the EurOBIS database is planned. Quality control (QC) steps include taxonomic QC (WoRMS and LifeWatch web services), geographic QC (GIS and LifeWatch web services), and general completeness of the record (sample size, sampling protocol, metadata, presence, abundance, biomass, length measurements, …).