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EMODnet Biology reaches 30 million data point occurrences, and other highlights from 2022

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Jellyfish

2022 has gone and throughout the year, EMODnet Biology carried out multiple activities to process the data according to international standards and make the information freely available as interoperable data layers and data products. There are a few remarkable highlights to remember.

EMODnet Biology presented its workflow and contributions done to reach the communities outside Europe during the IODE Ocean Data Conference in February 2022. If you would like to check them, do not miss out the presentation via the external link EMODnet Biology: A European initiative with global influence 

In March 2022, a 3-day workshop was carried out, where partners together with open research and data science experts reviewed the best practices in developing Biology data products and set goals to create new innovative EMODnet Biology products. For example, to model invasive species with current and future climate scenarios, including the data from other thematic lots. As part of this, efforts continued to work on the development of an R package that accesses all EMODnet WCS  webservices improving their accessibility.

Later in May 2022, EMODnet Biology presented the European perspective on its regional ocean data value chain, during the 22nd UN Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea meeting in New York. Ocean experts met together to open a discussion and share knowledge towards improving the international cooperation that is needed to address the challenges currently faced by the ocean community and people around the world.

The second half of the year, two online citizen science projects were implemented to support us with the digitization of historical data from the beginning of the past century! These projects were done using the citizen science platforms DoeDat and Zooniverse. Eighteen volunteers together with the expertise of VLIZ and HCMR data managers helped complete 41 tasks and the data that were once only in paper form, are now freely available via EMODnet Biology. A huge thank you to the citizen scientists who contributed to it!