The GEO Handbook on Biodiversity Observation Networks

Michele Walters is a senior researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa where she is currently the coordinator for the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Technical Support Unit for Africa. She trained as a conservation ecologist at the University of Stellenbosch and, after spending four years teaching zoology at Walter Sisulu University, she joined the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) where she was involved in a number of projects dealing with medicinal, invasive and succulent plants of southern Africa. Following this she was the Executive Officer for the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) and ran its project office from the CSIR's Pretoria campus.

Biodiversity observation systems are almost everywhere inadequate to meet local, national and international (treaty) obligations. As a result of alarmingly rapid declines in biodiversity in the modern era, there is a strong, worldwide desire to upgrade our monitoring systems, but little clarity on what is actually needed and how it can be assembled from the elements which are already present. This book intends to provide practical guidance to broadly-defined biodiversity observation networks at all scales, but predominantly the national scale and higher. This is a practical how-to book with substantial policy relevance. It will mostly be used by technical specialists with a responsibility for biodiversity monitoring to establish and refine their systems. It is written at a technical level, but one that is not discipline-bound: it should be intelligible to anyone in the broad field with a tertiary education.

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