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Institution:University of California, Riverside
Email Address: james.baldwin@ucr.edu
Research Area: __TITLE__
Views of James G. Baldwin about report of the Biodiversity Monitoring Workshop :
My enthusiastic support for this concise but well-thought-out report/strategy for tackling national biodiversity inventory. Certainly the LTER sites, as well as other focal points for biodiversity (i.e. InBio, Costa Rica), have demonstrated that there is much more information content for less cost when taxa-based expertise coordinate survey efforts; i.e. one soil sample analyzed for invertebrates, bacteria, fungi, physical properties etc. is much more informative than each higher taxon inventoried from a separate soil sample!
One concern, however, is that inventory of certain organisms might require a very specific sampling habitat (i.e. algae endemic to a particular lake). If that particular habitat did not have interest to a broader range of taxonomists, it would probably fall outside the fifty observatories, but nevertheless, must be sampled, if algae (for example) are to be represented as part of a national inventory. A compromise might be that each of the fifty observatories would have a fairly narrow geographic scope for intensive sampling, but they might also represent a broader sphere of coordination where they would provide support (e.g. databases etc.) for an entire state (for example) and for certain investigators that could justify working outside the main part of the observatory.
Regarding the observatory housing temporary voucher species. ---I think this is an excellent approach. I also propose that there be a general policy of associating specimens as quickly as possible, as part of the database of a recognized museum. The vouchers, could remain, for a time, physically at the observatory. In effect, the observatory would become a remote site to the museum (the specimens would be on long-term oan to the observatory from the museum)---but officially there would be accountability through the museum. In addition, thorugh the museum, information contact would be more readily available to the broader scientific community (assuming the museum was on line).
Jim