Biodiversity and Freshwater Information Systems

Abstract

Species observed in freshwaters are typically good indicators of the health/status of these ecosystems and are therefore frequently analyzed as part of ecological monitoring programs. The biodiversity data generated during such monitoring routines, in combination with data from other ecological studies in freshwaters, can form an invaluable source of information to support sustainable management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. Pressured by funding agencies such as the EU, the call for open access to data, which enables the reuse of data for addressing large-scale and/or transdisciplinary research problems, is becoming increasingly important. In this chapter we discuss the importance of documenting and describing data and making these metadata available to improve the understanding and discoverability of datasets and specifically examine different facets of biodiversity data. We provide an overview of existing freshwater (biodiversity) information systems that enable data holders to adequately publish their data and find appropriate data for their research.