An inventory of biodiversity data sources for conservation monitoring

RESEARCH ARTICLE An inventory of biodiversity data sources for conservation monitoring P. J. StephensonID1*, Carrie Stengel2 1 IUCN SSC Species Monitoring Specialist Group, c/o Laboratory for Conservation Biology, Department of Ecology & Evolution, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland, 2 Global Wildlife Conservation, Austin, Texas, United States of America * StephensonPJ@gmail.com Abstract Many conservation managers, policy makers, businesses and local communities cannot access the biodiversity data they need for informed decision-making on natural resource management. A handful of databases are used to monitor indicators against global biodiver- sity goals but there is no openly available consolidated list of global data sets to help manag- ers, especially those in high-biodiversity countries. We therefore conducted an inventory of global databases of potential use in monitoring biodiversity states, pressures and conserva- tion responses at multiple levels. We uncovered 145 global data sources, as well as a selec- tion of global data reports, links to which we will make available on an open-access website. We describe trends in data availability and actions needed to improve data sharing. If the conservation and science community made a greater effort to publicise data sources, and make the data openly and freely available for the people who most need it, we might be able to mainstream biodiversity data into decision-making and help stop biodiversity loss. Introduction Biodiversity continues to decline [1, 2]. There is growing demand for more evidence-based

conservation, with data informing decisions and evaluating performance [3, 4]. This will become even more important as the world commits to post-2020 biodiversity targets [5]. In addition to governments and civil society organisations, businesses striving for sustainability also struggle to identify suitable indicators and data sets [6]. Effective, evidence-based biodi- versity conservation and natural resource management requires data on the state of species and habitats, the threats and pressures they face, and the policies and actions implemented to address them. However, although monitoring is standard best practice in project management, often it is not conducted thoroughly [7]. As a result, biodiversity data are scattered, frag- mented, a challenge to assemble, and rarely available to decision makers [8–10]. Blockages to biodiversity monitoring include lack of access to existing data sets [9], exacer- bated by many organisations acting independently to develop their own databases and data platforms [11]. In high-biodiversity countries, such as in tropical Africa, limited capacity and expertise for data sharing and use are often compounded by more limited resources to pay for raw images and data processing, as well as limited internet capacity [9, 12, 13]. Many of the PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242923 December 2, 2020 1 / 14 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Stephenson PJ, Stengel C (2020) An inventory of biodiversity data sources for conservation monitoring. PLoS ONE 15(12):

e0242923. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0242923 Editor: Fraser Andrew Januchowski-Hartley, Swansea University, UNITED KINGDOM Received: July 17, 2020 Accepted: November 11, 2020 Published: December 2, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 Stephenson, Stengel. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: No authors have competing interests.