This Biodiversity Digitization and Mobilization workshop run in collaboration with partners from multiple EU-funded BID projects in Zimbabwe invited stakeholders to the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe from the 16th-19th of January 2018.
The general aim of the workshop was to disseminate knowledge from the BID Capacity Enhancement workshop attended by project teams by providing a refresher course on digitization. Over the three days, 25 Museum staff, two officials from the National Parks and Wildlife Authority and 20 undergraduate students from the National University of Science and Technology were trained on digitization, GIS tools and ecological modelling techniques with teaching also offering how to access biodiversity data from GBIF. The workshop also offered the opportunity to exchange knowledge and form collaborations between all partners and projects.
Through the workshop, topics covered areas including:
- Introduction to Biodiversity Digitization projects
- Data cleaning options
- Taxonomy and Geography checks
- Introduction to publishing data on the IPT
Stakeholders in attendence came from small and national BID projects for:
- Mobilizing specimen data on bats and rodents from Zimbabwe
- Digitizing the Matobo Hills Arachnid collections at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe
- Mobilization of data on non-timber forest species in biodiversity hotspots of Zimbabwe
- Freshwater biodiversity of the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe: Assessing conservation priorities using primary species occurrence data
