At its meeting on 25 June, the GEOBON Implementation committee endorsed the Freshwater Biodiversity Observation Network (FWBON) as a Thematic Biodiversity Observation Network affiliated with GEOBON.
Built on existing regional and global networks, the Freshwater Biodiversity Observation Network (FWBON) will be an important mechanism to collect, standardize and distil freshwater biological and ecosystem data and information into products that will improve the observation, reporting and protection of freshwater biodiversity. It will enable the global scientific community to describe the relationships between biodiversity, organism abundance, system productivity, and ecosystem services.
FWBON currently has 108 members from 42 countries and is attracting considerable interest from researchers and practitioners involved observing and evaluating freshwater biodiversity. In addition to building the network, FWBON will focus on three main activities in the next two years; 1) improving the quality and geographic coverage of freshwater biodiversity observations across the world, and realising public availability and interoperability of the associated data; 2) supporting and building the freshwater information platform; and 3) contributing to a global classification of inland water ecosystems.