LifeWatch Observatory Sensors Meeting

On Thursday January 26th 2017, the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) and imec met for the first time to explore opportunities for collaboration on sensor data analysis.

PRESS RELEASE - Critically endangered eels arrive in our Flemish rivers after a 6000 kilometer migration

With spring hanging in the air, also the glass eels are arriving at the Flemish coast. Coming from the Sargasso Sea they currently are swimming up rivers and channels, a journey full of obstacles. Here and elsewhere in Europe, the numbers of arriving glass eel dropped drastically to a fraction (2%) of the numbers arriving 50 years ago. One of the main reasons for this sharp decline and their status as 'Critically Endangered' species are the many barriers that adult eel experience in their migration route to the sea.

New European 'Big Data' e-infrastructure to support biodiversity research

On March 17th 2017, the European Commission granted the legal status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) to the e-Science and Technology European Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research (LifeWatch). With this measure, the EU provides the facility with many administrative advantages enjoyed by international organisations and therefore helps to successfully implement the infrastructure project.

Today is Taxonomist Appreciation Day!

Back in 2013, Terry McGlynn – researcher & associate Professor of Biology at the California State University Dominguez Hills – has declared March 19th as a new holiday, being “Taxonomist Appreciation Day”.

Successful external acoustic tagging of twaite shad Alosa fallax (Lacépède 1803)

New publication about the LifeWatch.be Fish Acoustic Receiver Network

When OTN meets ETN...

During the European Telemetry Network (ETN) / Ocean Tracking Network Database (OTN) Workshop (February 14th-17th 2017, Halifax, Canada), the technical teams from ETN and OTN compared their database infrastructure, evaluated and planned for collaborative efforts to carry forward, and discovered new methods, both policy and programming, to strengthen the collaborative efforts of OTN and the ETN.

Thanks to many hands the World Register for Marine Species is becoming more complete

The World register for marine species (WoRMS) aspires to contain all marine species ever described worldwide in one list. With the financial assistance of the project LifeWatch we were able to organize several data grants, meetings and workshops for experts in the course of 2016 designed to further improve this register and continue to complete it. The result? Thousands of new names added, a revision of (tens of) thousands already available names, and the development of new portals and tools, helping the user and editor community in accessing and utilizing WoRMS.

Aristotle and marine biodiversity

Although many people are not aware of this, Aristotle has made many contributions to the field of marine biology. To celebrate his specific contributions, we are featuring 5 stories linking Aristotle's scientific contributions to taxonomy, ecology and species distributions to current day initiatives.

Big brother is watching you!

Find out more about the four Birdcams currently installed in the Belgian Marine LifeWatch Observatory

The LifeWatch Wallonia-Brussels team publishes their ecotope database of the Walloon region

This prototype of object-based landscape description provides more than 80 biotic and abiotic variables for functionally homogeneous landscape units. Online navigation tools help you navigate through the integrated information layers and the database is available for ecological modelers.