Conservation Evidence is a free, authoritative information resource designed to support decisions about how to maintain and restore global biodiversity. It summarises evidence from the scientific literature about the effects of conservation interventions such as methods of habitat or species management.
NatureShare is a tool for individuals and groups in Victoria to document and share information about their local environment. Everything you put into NatureShare (photos, locations, biological attributes) is shared in a real and functional way with everyone across Victoria. NatureShare is free to everyone and can be used by anyone (individuals, groups, councils, companies, etc). Anyone, or any group, can set up species ‘collections’ for their own property, for parks/reserves, for areas/towns, for anything, anywhere.
In April 2011 I wrote the opinion piece Queensland floods: information, history and knowledge to highlight how the January 2011 floods in South East Queensland had their historical precedents, in the hope of encouraging the better use of historical information in flood risk planning.
That eastern Australia has experienced devastating floods in January 2013, just two years after the horrors of January 2011, comes to me as no surprise. These floods are not extraordinary or unexpected events. Rather, they are a normal part of the considerable climatic variability experienced in eastern Australia. Read the rest of this entry »
Hunter Air and Health is a community resource on air quality and health in the rapidly developing Hunter Valley of NSW to improve planning, empower community environmental advocates, and support environmental conflict resolution. It includes an “infomap”, which is a structured guide to air pollution monitoring, health studies, and local, national, and international organisations and agencies.
The NRM knowledge online repository is designed as an open access digital archive for publicly funded information derived from Australian Government investments in natural resource management activities. It has been developed to be compliant with the Open Archives Initiative interoperability standards and to deliver on the Australian Government’s commitment to providing open access to publicly funded information.
HOPE Australia has launched a nation-wide Environmental Information Display (EID) campaign to provide information on environmental issues directly to individuals and local communities. HOPE is appealing to local councils and community groups who want to make a difference to assist by nominating possible locations for the displays. EID’s are an effective way of distributing newsletters, brochures and other literature from a variety of community organizations and government agencies. Topics covered are relevant to the everyday lifestyles of Australian householders, and include waste reduction, energy conservation, water consumption, climate change and its impacts on biodiversity, etc.
The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) project is building a biodiversity information platform to provide scientists and others with the information they need now and in decades to come. To achieve this, the ALA and its partners are making a wide range of biodiversity data and datasets more accessible and useable online through the ALA website, and developing new tools for research and analysis. Already, users of the ALA website can combine species distribution information with mapping tools, identification keys, photos, names lists, sensitive data service (coming) and published literature. They can create a list and/or map of the species living in a particular area, such as within 5 kms of their home. The Atlas project is a partnership between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian natural history collections community and the Australian Government.
The purpose of Information Awareness Month (IAM) is to increase public awareness of information and its place in all aspects of daily life. By focusing attention at a number of events during the month of May on the role that information plays in day to day activities, the value of good information practices and policies are highlighted and promoted. The theme for IAM 2011 is Information overload: Finding the tree in the digital forest. This theme is also connected to the United Nations General Assembly declaration of 2011 as International Year of Forests.
The coincidence of the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry and Information Awareness Month offers the opportunity to explore how well our urban communities are using information and knowledge in regard to natural disasters. In early January this year the media carried horrific images and stories of the loss of life and damage caused by flooding in the southern Queensland towns of Toowoomba and Grantham and in the cities of Brisbane and Ipswich. Surprise was expressed at how such severe events could have happened. But the reality is that these floods have their predecessors, as explored in the article Queensland floods: information, history and knowledge.
The coincidence of the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry and Information Awareness Month offers the opportunity to explore how well our communities are using information and knowledge in regard to natural disasters. The purpose of Information Awareness Month is to increase public awareness of information and its place in all aspects of daily life.
In early January this year the media carried horrific images and stories of the loss of life and damage caused by flooding in the southern Queensland towns of Toowoomba and Grantham and in the cities of Brisbane and Ipswich. Surprise was expressed at how such severe events could have happened. But the reality is that these floods have their predecessors. Read the rest of this entry »