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John Wieczorek has long had an interest in the conservation of Madagascar's biodiversity, and has cooperated with the Réseau de la Biodiversité de Madagascar (REBIOMA) project since 2002. The REBIOMA project's goal is to make validated, up-to-date biodiversity data available for conservation planning in Madagascar, and to provide conservation tools and map products to conservation planners and managers to facilitate identifying conservation priorities for the region.
At the 2003 World Parks Congress, Madagascar's President Marc Ravalomanana decreed his intention to triple the size of the protected area network for Madagascar, one of the most biodiversity-rich and threatened countries in the world. Working with a variety of government and non-government agencies, the REBIOMA project plays a critical role in identifying these target areas for conservation. To accomplish its tasks, the REBIOMA project must draw on the most current and well-validated data sources, using flexible tools to conduct a range of spatial analyses. The database and tools must be accessible by multiple users and be networked with other databases around the world.
Prior to receiving the Ebbe Nielsen Prize, Wieczorek was only able to collaborate minimally with REBIOMA, due to many other commitments. The Prize permitted John to lead the REBIOMA team in developing system and technical requirements for, within a single web portal, integrating GBIF-mediated and other data (using the TAPIR protocol), automated georeferencing and data validation (using BioGeomancer) and state-of-the-art modeling tools for predicting species distributions and optimally designing reserves. This work was done last year at the University of California, Berkeley. Wieczorek and colleagues also trained REBIOMA staff from Madagascar in georeferencing, and worked with them to train BioGeomancer to interpret localities written in French.
On the strength of this work, Claire Kremen, Technical Advisor to the REBIOMA project and faculty member at University of California, Berkeley, was then able to obtain a $390,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to implement the master plan for the web-portal that the REBIOMA team had designed with Wieczorek's assistance.
With this funding, a web-based biodiversity repository and conservation planning software suite that incorporates data from GBIF and other data providers will be established to help ensure that the most recent data are available and accessible for planning conservation responses to climate change.
In June 2007, Wieczorek will accompany Kremen and other members of the team to Madagascar, where they will conduct capacity-building workshops and establish the first web-linked datasets in Madagascar. The new technologies created for the repository are expected to provide a model system that can be used as a blueprint for other conservation priority regions around the world.
In particular, Wieczorek and Kremen hope that their work will provide a pattern for the establishment of other portals in synergy with GBIF's CEPDEC project, which aims to assist developing countries to establish portals and share biodiversity information.
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