SELVA International :: Conservation HUB

Conservation HUB

Collaborator: University of Georgia River Basin Center

This exciting project will be the first online conservation “hub” enabling information-sharing and collaboration between scientists and people working in conservation, worldwide. The HUB initiative responds to the great, but largely unmet, potential for research and conservation institutions to pool their knowledge about environmental problems and develop a network capable of delivering this knowledge throughout the world.

The HUB will provide an accessible interface to link and foster dialogue among academic institutions, conservation non profits, government institutions, funders, and conservationists working globally to resolve related environmental issues. The HUB will enable easy locating of environmental information from credible sources, such as scientific reports, journals, and experts, especially in academia. The HUB will create relational databases that can be queried to: provide project-specific environmental information; contact agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other (non-confidential) users that are working to solve similar problems; contact experts and funders interested in the problem; and provide syntheses of commonly requested information.

How it will work

The HUB will use state of the art information technology to create an interactive digital forum where local conservation needs, across the globe, can be easily expressed and answers or collaborative services efficiently provided. Users (e.g., individual, NGO, agency, business, government, community, news media) will be able to query the HUB, through search protocol using artificial intelligence structure, and depending on the nature of a query, the user will be directed to one or more of the following destinations:

1. Database of relevant, referenced, information such as:

• Frequently asked questions with answers, regarding the subject (i.e., environmental problem) of the query (e.g., species-specific conservation methodology, life history traits, human threats).

• Digitized remote image maps (e.g., tropical forest showing plantation clearing, distribution of clear-cuts in temperate zone forests, location of major coral reef bleaching).

• Pollution (e.g., toxic chemicals, air contaminates, nutrient/silt loading in aquatic ecosystems) showing health and environmental risks, symptoms of poisoning, and suggested biotic integrity indices to indicate environmental degradation and successful recovery.

• Potential sources of funds to help address the problem.

2. Directory of expertise that provides referral of query to an expert who has agreed to respond to requests from the HUB.

3. Entities facing or interested in collaborating on similar problems (e.g., NGOs, individuals, or groups interested in collaborating on or funding related projects).

The HUB will serve as a filter between SELVA clients and SELVA scientists. In some circumstances, field visits by experts may be necessary when environmental problems are unusual or particularly complex. If the appropriate information or collaboration cannot be found through the HUB online network, the HUB will direct queries to SELVA scientists, who will then prioritize queries for in-person or on-site consultation or collaboration.