An international team of representatives from 73 museums and herbaria collections around the world, including researchers from the Supreme Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), it is necessary to coordinate the natural history collections that exist in the world and make them truly accessible to face the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. The article, signed by more than 150 experts from 30 countries, was published in the latest issue of the journal. Science.
The problem is that many Objects, materials and specimens scattered in museums and research centers all over the planet, but whose information and data are not available or inaccessible.
“Our assessment of natural history collections shows that it is urgent that we focus our efforts on analyzing, systematizing, preserving and sharing the information contained in these collections,” says Kirk Johnson, director of the natural history museum Smithsoninan Institution. From Washington DC, home to some of the world’s most important collections.
Most of the information is not available
For this study, the researchers examined the state of scientific infrastructures devoted to natural history collections and found: More than 1,100 million objects are preserved in the world’s 73 largest museumsNotifies CSIC in a press release.
A total of 4,500 people and 4,000 volunteers who are dedicated to research participate in these collections. Much of the information in these collections is not available or unknown. Actually, only 16% of objects have been digitized and only 0.2% have genetic records.
“The study of all collections in the world as a whole before going digital”
“The purpose of this analysis was to quickly and accurately evaluate the contents of any collection. that all collections function as a single collection before being digitized”Explains Ignacio Doadrio, deputy director of collections at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC).
“We created a framework for this that is defined by a grid of 19 types of collections and 16 regions. In this way, any object in a collection can be identified within one of the 304 cells of the grid,” elaborates the MNCN-CSIC researcher.
A business that requires a large investment
“The set of natural history collections is the foundation that sustains our knowledge of the planet and the role man plays in nature. We are now crossing planetary boundaries on important issues such as energy consumption, food demand, deforestation or climate change gas emissions. Faced with this accumulation of interconnected problems, natural history collections are a fundamental source of information dealing with biodiversity conservation.mineral resource extraction or bioeconomy” contextualizes MNCN-CSIC director Rafael Zardoya.
The authors also highlight that despite the enormous size of the collections, little is still known about areas where research efforts need to be stepped up, such as the tropics, polar regions, or marine systems. They also admit The concentration of natural history museums in North America and Europe due to its colonial past is an obstacle to knowledge sharing. This perpetuates power imbalances. In the future, it is crucial that this global collection reflects and supports museums in the rest of the planet.
Despite its relevance, information from collections is not very accessible and is also at risk.. First of all, not because of the lack of investment in infrastructures and the expert people who maintain them, but also because of accidents such as the fires that destroyed museums, such as in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) or New Delhi (India). or armed conflicts, such as in Ukraine in October 2022, when a missile hit the National Herbarium.
Currently, the impact of the collections is limited by the difficulty of accessing them and the lack of staff and infrastructure to ensure global coordination. “There are different initiatives already working on the digitization and consolidation of collections, such as GBIF, DISSCo or GRSciColl, but this article is the first global approach to address this shortcoming. It is about ensuring that natural history museums and collections have access to the information they store. collecting material three centuries later. It will be an invaluable contribution to help us solve the challenges we face”, analyzes Zardoya.
“Getting funding and international cooperation is vital to advancing activities that allow us to use the data of the samples we protect,” he continues.
advices
For this reason, those who have signed this article, More than 150 experts, passing through Brazil or Russia, from nearly thirty countries stretching from Kenya to Australia, offer the following advice:
-
In 2100, decisions about the future will be made by looking at the collections collected now; It is therefore necessary to give impetus to a collection of materials that allows a knowledge base to be maintained in the collections.
-
Data collected by hundreds of institutions over the last three centuries should be the foundation on which ecosystem recovery plans are based. The role of these scientific institutions must be given a new impetus.
-
Both the collection and sharing of data should be done while maintaining ethical criteria that take into account all companies involved. Museums should involve local communities and integrate their perspectives and needs.
-
It is important to build a global infrastructure that also takes into account regional collections, as they act as a bridge between larger collections and provide a wealth of information and local context.
The development of a global scientific infrastructure will provide an important support in the search for solutions. “We present these recommendations as a roadmap. museums, foundations, governments, industries and companies accelerate and coordinate their efforts to build this global collection. It is an effort that could serve to change the current trajectory of climate change and biodiversity loss in the coming years,” Zardoya said.
work published in Science It began to take shape on the initiative of Smithsoninan director Kirk R. Johnson before the pandemic broke out in 2020, but the covid-19 pandemic forced efforts to focus on the emergency and work was delayed.
The board meeting held in October 2022 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of MNCN-CSIC brought together many signatories to this article. In those days, the need arose to combine efforts to create a global collection. “Probably being aware of the current situation, the focus and efforts of everything seem to be focused in the same place and there will be a reason for that,” Zardoya concludes.
…..
Contact address of the environment department: [email protected]