MOC with Earthwatch Australia
The ALA has signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with Earthwatch Australia to work together to develop and share critical biodiversity informatics infrastructure.
Earthwatch is working with Land & Water Australia, University of Melbourne and the Bureau of Meteorology to develop ClimateWatch, a climate change monitoring programme based around the capture of phenology data, information on the seasonal occurrence of events such as flowering or nesting dates for different species. This approach has been very successful in other parts of the world, an example being the Nature’s Calendar project run by the UK’s Woodlands Trust and Earthwatch is establishing a similar programme here in Australia. This would involve members of the public in building up a picture of the timing of these annual events from year to year.
The ALA has many similar goals and expects to work with Earthwatch to develop tools and interfaces to make it simple for any community to contribute observations to increase our understanding of Australian biodiversity.
The ALA is represented on the ClimateWatch technical advisory group.
