Years of national and international research have left Bolivia with extensive documentation of its biodiversity but limited tools for assimilating, interpreting and disseminating this data. There is also a shortage of digital data and limited access to outputs, particularly for stakeholders such as teachers and the general public. With important tropical ecosystems in Bolivia and elsewhere under growing pressure, there is an urgent need for new ways to acquire and distribute biodiversity information.

In order to address this issue, a prior phase of this project delivered the Geospatial Center for Biodiversity (GCB) in April 2013. The GCB, in its current form, is a novel online, open access platform for the distribution Bolivian vertebrate records. This project will build off the strong foundation of the GCB to advance and implement a national strategy and distribution database that includes three major taxonomic groups: vertebrates, invertebrates and flora for Bolivia. The team will also partner with Guyra Paraguay to expand this database to include biodiversity records from Paraguay.

The specific objectives for the project are to:

1. Mobilize and import biodiversity data to the system to increase the number of entries in the Geo-vertebrate database and to expand the spatial coverage to a national level.
2. Develop and deliver Geo-flora and Geo-invertebrates for Bolivia.
3. Transfer the Geo-flora, Geo-invertebrate and Geo-vertebrate systems to Guyra Paraguay to start GCB-Paraguay, and achieve enough records uploaded to show database structure and function.
4. Develop a dissemination strategy to increase the visibility and use of the GCB platform at all levels (students, teachers, authorities, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and the general public).

With COVID-19 restricting travel and meeting with our grantees, JRS invited our projects to submit a short update for the JRS Board of Trustees. Though intended for an internal JRS audience, we loved these videos and share them here with permission. Enjoy!

• Bolivian partner institutions will identify, validate, and successfully import key biodiversity datasets, including 75,000 vertebrate records.
• Develop and deliver Geo-flora and Geo-invertebrate databases. Work with the Herbario Nacional de Bolivia to implement these systems at the national level and populate them with over 60,000 flora records and 100,000 invertebrate records.
• Transfer the three systems (Geo-vertebrates, Geo-invertebrates, and Geo- flora) to Guyra Paraguay, creating the Paraguayan webGIS interface for the GCB-Paraguay.
• Populate the GCB-Bolivia and GCB-Paraguay with over 400,000 records.
• Organize a series of workshops in Bolivia and Paraguay to establish a consensus on data distribution, data availability and data ownership that meets both partners’ expectations and the objectives of the project.
• Develop Geo-Chaco, a database extension that will integrate the information from both countries into an ecoregion specific webGIS format. This will complement current conservation efforts for the Chacoan Region of South America.

The project will significantly advance the visibility of the conservation agenda in both Bolivia and Paraguay. Through the GCB extensions (Geo-flora and Geo-invertebrate), biodiversity data will be widely available to key organizations, decision makers, and environmental managers working to implement on-the-ground conservation management. Additionally, the availability of biodiversity information and the development of the GCB partnership will allow further collaboration and better coordination for the development of projects and generation of human and economic resources to increase the visibility of the conservation agenda in the region. This should lead to a more efficient conservation strategy not only in Bolivia, but also in the region as a whole.

An additional goal of the project is to improve the coordination amongst organizations to promote a more efficient conservation program in Bolivia and regionally.  The team will partner with five organizations, Herbario Nacional de Bolivia, Asociación Civil Armonía, Centro de Biodiversidad y Genética, Fundación PCMB, and Herbario Martín Cárdenas, in addition to Guyra Paraguay. These collaborations will increase visibility of the conservation agenda and move forward long term objectives of the project. Additionally, outputs generated from the project via thesis, articles, conferences and presentations will further promote new collaboration, partnerships, and projects to address a wider range conservation issues.

• Currently the GCB portal has 90,169 vertebrate records.
• The new portions of the GCB portal, The Geo-Flora and Geo-Invertebrates, are finalized and awaiting upload of approximately 70,000 formatted records.
• Partner organizations have been involved in developing and testing the data-entry portal, such that it is anticipated that data publication will progress rapidly.
• During 2016 partners began systematizing their information. They have formatted a little over 50,000 records which are ready to be uploaded into the new portal.

This project faced administrative issues regarding disseminating funds to partners for almost all of 2016. These issues were complicated by a change in the Bolivian Minister of Economy in June 2017, which resulted in additional administrative hoops and significant time delays. Despite the unfortunate circumstances, the team used the time afforded by the delay to  conduct outreach regarding the GCB portal and test data entry workflows. Results shows that by publicizing the portal resulted in a 20% increase in visitors to the site in 2016 over the previous year, and an increase in the number of scientists registered as data contributors. The team is now on track to complete all scheduled activities by early 2019, and confident in the positive impacts the finished project will produce.

• Fernández M, LM Navarro, A Apaza-Quevedo, et al. (2015) Challenges and opportunities for the Bolivian Biodiversity Observation Network. Biodiversity. 16(2-3): 86-98. DOI: 10.1080/14888386.2015.1068710 (link)

Like some other JRS projects in Latin America, the GCB project has run into a bureaucratic roadblock for almost all of 2016 as Bolivia has changed rules that now limit the autonomy of institutions to spend international funds.  This is of particularly damage to the project as the progress on the technical sides and with partner institutions had been gaining momentum.  We remain hopeful that the project will resume and continue its succes.