Long Live Biodiversity Data! LifeWatch ERIC and LifeWatch Italy at Living Data 2025

Living Data 2025 (1)

The Living Data 2025 Conference took place in Bogotá, Colombia, from 21-24 October 2025, bringing together biodiversity networks, scientists, researchers, practitioners and other experts from around the world. The event offered an opportunity to connect with the Latin American community and exchange experiences with global biodiversity data initiatives.

This year’s programme focused on three main themes:

  • Building standards that promote data sharing and interoperability;
  • Bringing together and providing access to diverse sources of information;
  • Monitoring our progress toward conserving and restoring the planet’s biodiversity.

LifeWatch ERIC participated actively in the event, co-organising a symposium led by Christos Arvanitidis, CEO, together Niels Raes (NLBIF/Naturalis Biodiversity Centre), Lyubomir Penev, Peter Bozakov, and Nikol Yovcheva (Pensoft Publishers) , titled “Long Live Biodiversity Data: Knowledge Transfer and Continuity across Research Projects”. The session spread over two days, 22 and 23 October (the recording is available here: https://www.livingdata2025.com/program.html?session=6788879-1_2025-10-22_Caldas).

The symposium addressed one of the main challenges in international research projects: their limited duration. The discussion therefore focused on how to ensure that the knowledge and data produced continue to have an impact beyond the projects’ lifetime.

Experts from across DiSSCo, LifeWatch ERIC and Pensoft communities explored strategies for securing the legacy of research results through open science practices, with a particular emphasis on the quality of data for effective reuse, the standardisation of nomenclature, and the development of FAIR foundations for biodiversity genomics. They also discussed the integration of digital tools to enhance collaboration, from platforms for data-rich publication to systems enabling faster communication of invasive species alerts and the translation of local findings into policy-relevant knowledge.

Christos Arvanitidis presented the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub, developed within the BiCIKL project, as a concrete example of how European and global communities can work together to ensure lasting access to biodiversity knowledge in his talk, titled “In his talk, titled “Biodiversity Knowledge Hub: Bridging Research Infrastructures, Aggregators, and Communities – Past, Present, and Future”.

Examples from several international initiatives demonstrated how the continuity of biodiversity data can be maintained through information hubs, semantic frameworks, and collaborative workflows that enable exchanges within the global biodiversity data space.

In parallel with the symposium, LifeWatch ERIC and LifeWatch Italy contributed several oral presentations:

  • Christos Arvanitidis | Transforming Knowledge into Practice: Science, Technology and Innovation in Support of the UN SDGs.
  • Christos Arvanitidis | Biodiversity Knowledge Hub: Bridging Research Infrastructures, Aggregators, and Communities – Past, Present, and Future
  • Maite Irazábal Pla | A FAIR tool for assessing the environmental impact of energy transition policies.
  • Andrea Tarallo | A new platform to build and support citizen science projects in biodiversity.
  • Andrea Tarallo | LifeWatch Italy infrastructure: a national asset for Open and FAIR Biodiversity Data.
  • Martina Pulieri | Bridging biodiversity data: an ontology-driven approach
  • Ilaria Rosati | Traits Thesaurus: a semantic artefact to harmonise data and metadata of aquatic organism traits
  • Cristina Di Muri | A FAIR and Open approach for the study and integrated management of Invasive Alien Species in Italy
  • Cristina Di Muri | Empowering data integration and semantic interoperability across environmental domains to address the biodiversity crisis and related environmental challenges.

Overall, it was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with project partners, exchange ideas with institutions from our field, and meet colleagues from our national node, LifeWatch Italy. Take a look at the conference website for updates, recordings, photos and more: www.livingdata2025.com

In the picture: Christos Arvanitidis, Maite Irazábal Pla (LifeWatch ERIC), Ilaria Rosati, Andrea Tarallo, Cristina Di Muri (LifeWatch Italy).

Biodiversity Meets Data: the EU & SERI project that will turn biodiversity data into action

BMD Project

BMD (Biodiversity Meets Data) aims to enhance access to high-throughput biodiversity monitoring tools, analyses, and data to support evidence-based conservation efforts across Europe.

The project, coordinated by Niels Raes from Naturalis Biodiversity Center, kicked off in Leiden, the Netherlands, at the beginning of March 2025 (click here for a nice group picture). Joaquín López Lérida attended the meeting on behalf of LifeWatch ERIC. During the event, presentations on the current biodiversity policy landscape highlighted how Biodiversity Meets Data can support key initiatives such as the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the Birds and Habitats Directives and the Nature Restoration Law.

Even before its official launch, the project had already made its first appearances – at the The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) workshop in November 2024, and at the Eurosite – European Land Conservation Network Annual Meeting in October.

More specifically, BMD will provide a Single Access Point (SAP) for natural resource managers and policymakers, offering access to: 

  • Biodiversity monitoring tools including image, sound, e-DNA and AI taxon identification services; 
  • Co-designed Virtual Research Environments (VREs) for terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms; 
  • A Web-GIS Map Viewer for data exploration.

The Virtual Research Environments (VREs) will build on the expertise of eLTER (terrestrial and freshwater domains) and LifeWatch ERIC (marine domain), combining biological data with environmental, climatic, and remotely sensed datasets.

These integrated platforms will bridge knowledge gaps through predictive modelling, supporting the identification of drivers of change and enabling analysis of climate and land cover impacts on species and habitats. 

In addition to its role in the marine VRE, LifeWatch ERIC will also contribute to the data visualisation engine and the design of the Single Access Point, and lead learning, training, and capacity-building initiatives.

The project’s tools and services will be co-designed and co-developed with stakeholders, ensuring user input guides every stage. Contributions from Biodiversa+ and BioDiMoBot during the kick-off meeting presented opportunities to connect BMD with ongoing biodiversity monitoring efforts across Europe.

BMD will help turn biodiversity data into actionable insights for conservation and policy, thanks to the collaboration of 14 partner institutions.

Funders: the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

Stay in touch via the official website: https://bmd-project.eu