Flo Grattarola, Frieda Wölke, Káča Tschernosterová participated on the Empowering Biodiversity Research conference (24.-28. March 2024) in the Naturals Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, The Netherlands.

The focus was on aspects of biodiversity informatics and using biodiversity data for research and policy. The conference represented a great update on the progress and current work of some initiatives such as the European Commission (Directorate-General for Environment), GBIF, Biodiversa+, BirdWatch, BiCIKL, Data4Nature (private sector), MAMBO (monitoring), ARISE, DISSCO (collections); and information on initiatives/projects that collect/gather different data types: camera traps (Agouti), DNA-based ones (Naturalis, ELIXIR, VIB UGent), specimen collections (Meise Botanic Garden), culture collections (MIRRI), taxonomy (COL connection with GBIF, TETTRIS), sound and images (Naturalist), remote sensing (LifeWatch, MAMBO).

Káča presented poster titled: SPARSE 1.0: a template for databases of species inventories, with an open example of Czech birds with Eva Tráníčková, Florencia Grattarola, Clara Rosse and Petr Keil as co-authors. For more info about the content see the associated paper in Biodiversity Data Journal.