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1. The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Pole to Pole of the Americas: Building a Community of Practice for Detecting Rapid Changes in Coastal Biodiversity

   https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2025.137  

   Moity, Nicolas; Bigatti, Gregorio; Muller-Karger, Frank; Montes, Enrique (January 2025, Oceanography)

   The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) is a global community of practice and network that links individuals and groups in an effort to monitor and understand changes in marine biodiversity. MBON functions within the larger framework of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Networks (GEO BON). These networks support mobilization of data to help nations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2015 and to address their own internal, local management needs. Marine biodiversity data are important for allowing countries and local communities to monitor changes that result from local human pressures and climate change. Such data enable informed planning and management of coastal areas and resources. 

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2. No branch left behind: tracking terrestrial biodiversity from a phylogenetic completeness perspective

   https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2696  

   Pinto‐Ledezma, Jesús N; Díaz, Sandra; Halpern, Benjamin S; Khoury, Colin; Cavender‐Bares, Jeannine (March 2024, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment)

   Biodiversity is ultimately the outcome of millions of years of evolution; however, due to increasing human domination of the Earth, biodiversity in its multiple dimensions is changing rapidly. Here, we present “phylogenetic completeness” (PC) as a concept and method for safeguarding Earth's evolutionary heritage by maintaining all branches of the tree of life. Using data for five major terrestrial clades, we performed a global evaluation of the PC approach and compared the results to an approach in which species are conserved or lost at random. We demonstrate that under PC, for a given number of species extinctions, it is possible to maximize the protection of evolutionary innovations in every clade. The PC approach is flexible, may be used to conduct a phylogenetic audit of biodiversity under different conservation scenarios, complements existing conservation efforts, and is linked to the post‐2020 UN Convention on Biodiversity targets. 

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3. Designing, generating, and translating deep-ocean observations for and with international policy makers

   https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsac143  

   Levin, Lisa A.; Cimoli, Laura; Gjerde, Kristina; Harden-Davies, Harriet; Heimbach, Patrick; LaScala-Gruenewald, Diana; Pachiadaki, Maria; Pillar, Helen R.; Smith, Leslie M.; Stocks, Karen; et al (August 2022, ICES Journal of Marine Science)

   Abstract Deep-ocean observing is essential for informing policy making in the arenas of climate, biodiversity, fisheries, energy and minerals extraction, pollution, hazards, and genetic resources. The Deep Ocean Observing Strategy (DOOS), a UN Ocean Decade endorsed programme, is meeting with representatives from relevant international bodies and agreements to strengthen their interface with the deep-ocean science community, ensure that deep observing is responsive to societal needs, identify points of entry for science in policy making, and to develop relevant products for broad use. DOOS collaboration with the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) facilitates this co-design. A DOOS policy liaison team is being formed to link the contacts, voices, and messaging of multiple deep-ocean networks and organizations in reaching international policy makers. The UN Ocean Decade will help to gain the ear of target communities, scale communication channels appropriately, minimize duplicative efforts, maximize limited resources, and organize inclusive and equitable public and private partners in deep-ocean science and policy. 

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4. Baltimore Ecosystem Study: Invertebrate and Restoration Habitat Data

   https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/675c0b7286358f4ba2fc991bc2af1eaa  

   Swan, Christopher (January 2020, Environmental Data Initiative)

   An often-cited benefit of river restoration is an increase in biodiversity or shift in composition to more desirable taxa. Yet, hard manipulations of habitat structure often fail to elicit a significant response in terms of biodiversity patterns. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the dispersal of organisms may have as large an influence on biodiversity patterns as environmental conditions. This influence of dispersal may be particularly influential in river networks which are linear branching, or dendritic, and thus constrain most dispersal to the river corridor. As such, some locations in river networks, such as isolated headwaters, are expected to respond less to environmental factors and less by dispersal than more well-connected downstream reaches. We applied this metacommunity framework to study how restoration drives biodiversity patterns in river networks. By comparing assemblage structure in headwater versus more well-connected mainstem sites, we learned that headwater restoration efforts supported higher biodiversity, exhibited more stable ecological communities compared with adjacent, un-restored reaches. Such differences were not evident in mainstem reaches. Consistent with theory and mounting empirical evidence, we attribute this finding to a relatively higher influence of dispersal-driven factors on assemblage structure in more well-connected, higher order reaches. An implication of this work is that, if biodiversity is to be a goal of restoration activity, such local manipulations of habitat should elicit a more profound response in small, isolated streams than in larger downstream reaches. These results offer another significant finding supporting the notion that restoration activity cannot proceed in isolation of larger scale, catchment level degradation. This dataset represents the microhabitat sampling. 

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5. The Critical Importance of Citizen Science Data

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.650760  

   de Sherbinin, Alex; Bowser, Anne; Chuang, Tyng-Ruey; Cooper, Caren; Danielsen, Finn; Edmunds, Rorie; Elias, Peter; Faustman, Elaine; Hultquist, Carolynne; Mondardini, Rosy; et al (March 2021, Frontiers in Climate)

   null (Ed.)

   Citizen science is an important vehicle for democratizing science and promoting the goal of universal and equitable access to scientific data and information. Data generated by citizen science groups have become an increasingly important source for scientists, applied users and those pursuing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Citizen science data are used extensively in studies of biodiversity and pollution; crowdsourced data are being used by UN operational agencies for humanitarian activities; and citizen scientists are providing data relevant to monitoring the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This article provides an International Science Council (ISC) perspective on citizen science data generating activities in support of the 2030 Agenda and on needed improvements to the citizen science community's data stewardship practices for the benefit of science and society by presenting results of research undertaken by an ISC-sponsored Task Group. 

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