In September of 2019, the day after the Autumn Equinox, the launch event of the Simplified Chinese version of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) was held as scheduled in the Botany Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) next to the Fragrant Hills Botanical Garden in western Beijing.

Dr. Joe Miller, the new Executive Secretary of GBIF, visited the office of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) at the time of the Autumn Equinox. The next day, CBCGDF representatives were invited to the launch and presentation event hosted by the GBIF CAS-node.

As mentioned in the previous event announcement, CBCGDF worked with the GBIF CAS-node in translating the simplified Chinese version of the GBIF website GBIF.org. The site currently supports English, French, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Danish and other languages. This is because in a global climate, GBIF is an international network and research infrastructure designed to provide everyone with open access to all types of life-related data on Earth. Its official website platform is available in many languages around the world. This is definitely an operation that is very beneficial to the health of the planet and humans.

As Dr. Joe Miller introduced at the event, GBIF currently has more than 1.3 billion species recorded, including 1466 data publishers from 59 national members and 39 institutional members; the number of data services provided per month reaches 327 billion of articles, the monthly visits reached nearly 190,000 times.

CBCGDF is also the official data publisher of GBIF and has been working to release more data on representative (endangered) species in China. The data on China on the GBIF platform reached 3.6 million, and the data released by CBCGDF was among the 1.8 million data contributed by China. Dr. Miller mentioned in the demonstration that compared to the 2013 edition of the Chinese Biological Species List, GBIF is still lacking data on Chinese species.

The event of the day was presided over by the head of the GBIF CAS-node Professor Ma Keping from the Institute of Botany of CAS. More than 70 domestic and foreign experts, scholars, students and GBIF Executive Secretary Dr. Joe Miller, and Deputy Director Dr. Yang Xiuhong of the Institute of Botany of CAS and other guests witnessed the unveiling of the simplified Chinese version of GBIF.org. CBCGDF representatives also listened to three rich and inspiring academic lectures in the field of biodiversity information science, felt a lot of being enlightened.

The three lectures were “The Global Biodiversity Information Facility: Data by and for the community”, “The Future of GBIF: Challenges and Opportunities” made by Dr. Joe Miller, and “Node Status of GBIF CAS in China” made by Dr. Xu Zheping, the Node manager of GBIF-CAS node. Stay tuned to CBCGDF's various news platforms. The hardcore content of these lectures will be presented later.

(Photo credit: CBCGDF)

Original Chinese article:

http://www.cbcgdf.org/NewsShow/4854/9986.html

By / Niu Jingmei