During the last couple of years, in cooperation with the Botanical Garden of Osnabrück University, JKI and others and through our colleague René Westerholt, GIScience Heidelberg has been actively engaged in a range of botanical projects:
- GE-Sell: Genetic conservation areas for wild celery species as part of a network of genetic conservation areas in Germany.
- WIPs-De: Establishment of a national network for the protection of endangered species of wild plants in a particular responsibility of Germany.
- WEL: National Gene Bank for Preserving Wild Plants with Relevance for Nutrition or Agriculture.
All these projects focus on nature conservation strategies as well as agricultural policy making, both of which being key societal issues in view of global food shortages and an ever increasing reduction in biodiversity.
Last week, a final meeting, leading-in the very final phase of the GE-Sell project, was held at the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food in Bonn. René presented innovative GIScience tools that provide botanists and policy makers simple yet powerful tools to otimise workflows in related projects. The highly interdisciplinary nature of this cooperation once again demonstrates the key role GIScience can play across a broad spectrum of challenging recent societal issues. Further information about these projects is also found soon in a forthcoming article in “Natur und Landschaft” (appearing in April 2017).
Borgmann, P., Westerholt, R., Oevermann, S. and Zachgo, S. (2017): Webbasierte und mobile Datenerfassung im Projekt “Netzwerk zum Schutz gefährdeter Wildpflanzen in Deutschland (WIPs-De)”. Natur und Landschaft, 92 (2), 69 – 75. DOI: 10.17433/2.2017.50153433.69-75.