News

GBIF Sweden is launching Data Fika, a new online series for Sweden’s biodiversity data community. Running from September 2026 to June 2027, the series offers ten informal sessions covering the journey from finding and using biodiversity data to preparing and publishing your own data through GBIF.

SBDI is excited to announce that SUBSIM, the Swedish platform for subsea image analysis, is now available through the European Digital Twin Ocean infrastructure EDITO.

SBDI is excited to see GBIF Sweden take part in important new BID project, helping strengthen biodiversity data mobilization and museum collection digitization across East and Southern Africa. The initiative highlights the growing importance of open, FAIR biodiversity data and international collaboration in supporting research, conservation, and evidence-based decision-making — values that are central to both SBDI and GBIF Sweden.

A new national initiative, the Swedish Metabarcoding Network (SMN), has been launched to bring together researchers and data producers working with eDNA and metabarcoding across Sweden. The network aims to improve the accessibility and reuse of metabarcoding data by supporting publication of processed biodiversity data in FAIR formats.

We are recruiting a new Director for the Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure (SBDI).

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has opened the call for submissions for the 2026 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge. The challenge promotes innovative uses of open biodiversity data by recognizing the development of tools, workflows, and applications that improve the access, integration, analysis, or reuse of biodiversity information.The Ebbe Nielsen Challenge...

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has opened the call for nominations for the 2026 GBIF Graduate Researchers Award. The award recognizes outstanding research by master’s and PhD students whose work uses GBIF-mediated biodiversity data and demonstrates innovation and discovery in biodiversity science and biodiversity informatics.The award is presented annually...

The first Biodiversity Monitoring Week (BioMonWeek 2026) will be held in Montpellier, France, from 4 to 8 May 2026. The event is conceived as a new European platform for biodiversity monitoring, bringing together experts from research, policy, public authorities, NGOs, the private sector, and citizen science to strengthen coordination and...

A new R package is now available on The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). SHARK4R provides researchers and environmental analysts with a tool for retrieving, quality assuring, and processing marine environmental data directly in R. The package includes client functions that connect users to several key databases, including SHARK, Dyntaxa,...

A new dataset from the National Inventories of Landscapes in Sweden (NILS) is now available through GBIF Sweden, offering a uniquely detailed look at how vegetation and habitats are distributed across the country. The dataset, “National Inventories of Landscapes in Sweden: Presence-absence Vegetation data”, brings nearly two decades of systematic...

The Cesab – Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity – of the FRB is opening the second edition of the training course «Artifical Intelligence for ecologists: a toolkit». This five-day training course aims to initiate ecologists to AI concepts and tools. The course will be a mix of...

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have launched the VectorNet Data Portal, providing a central access point to validated European occurrence data for vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks, sand flies, and biting midges. The portal leverages GBIF’s hosted portal infrastructure...

Artificial Intelligence is no longer just a tool—it is becoming a vital partner in the quest to understand and protect biodiversity. SBDI Days 2026 will explore this transformative partnership under the theme: AI and Biodiversity: a Perfect Pair!

GBIF Sweden will participate in the upcoming webinar “Open Data – a Resource for Academia,” organized by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and DIGG, the Agency for Digital Government. The event will take place on 17 October 2025, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., and will be held online.

A new version of ChatIPT, a chatbot developed by GBIF Norway, is now available for testing. The tool is designed to help non-technical users publish biodiversity data to GBIF, lowering the threshold for researchers, students, and institutions that may not have prior experience with data publishing.ChatIPT provides an accessible interface...

Use of GBIF-mediated data in science continues to grow across both disciplines and geography. In the first three months of 2025 alone, GBIF logged a 27 per cent increase in papers using open biodiversity data compared to the same period the year before.The newly released GBIF Science Review No. 12...

A new study published in Nature Scientific Data presents unprecedented insights into insect biodiversity in Sweden and Madagascar. The results, emerging from the Insect Biome Atlas (IBA) project, demonstrate the vast diversity of insect life through a large-scale DNA metabarcoding survey. All data from the study are now openly available through the GBIF network.

Today, 25 March, marks the launch of Researchdata.se, a new national web portal designed to make it easier for researchers to find, share, and reuse research data across various disciplines.

Two new datasets from the Swedish Bird Survey have been published, covering long-term data on waterbirds from January and September counts. With over 247,000 observations of nearly 22 million birds across 73 species over 58 years , these datasets provide a crucial resource for understanding changes in Sweden’s waterbird populations in the non-breeding season.

The DTO-BioFlow project is launching its second open call, inviting international networks, citizen science initiatives, research institutes, universities, and NGOs to contribute marine biodiversity data to the European Digital Twin of the Ocean. This initiative is aligned with the EU’s mission to restore oceans and waters by 2030, enhancing oceanographic...

GBIF Sweden has been awarded funding through the 2024 Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (CESP) for the project titled “Building capacity within biodiversity data between Ethiopia and GBIF nodes in Sweden and Finland.”This collaborative initiative, led by GBIF Sweden, brings together partners including Addis Ababa University, the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, the...

Collaboration around data can be the key to groundbreaking research. A good example is the global database Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative, which made a significant impact on the field of biodiversity in a short period of time.Systematic inventories of the same type as the Swedish National Forest Inventory are conducted...

A new SBDI tool to find, explore and access Swedish Biologging data is now available.Biologging is the use of devices to track animals and collect detailed information on their movement patterns, behaviour, physiology, and interactions with their environment over time. Through the Swedish Biologging Portal you can find sensor data...

A chatbot that helps transform spreadsheets into GBIF-ready datasets wins the 2024 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge. Prizes also went to a tool for automating data extraction from specimen labels, and to a multilingual chatbot designed to simplify the use of the Darwin Core data standard.The Ebbe Nielsen Challenge is an annual...

More innovative interdisciplinary research is desired by one of SBDI’s users who believes that open data drives research forward.In an article in the journal Curie, we meet in an interview Philip Buckland from Umeå University. Over the years, he has been involved in the development of SBDI. Philip is an...

GBIF Sweden has recently unveiled its test Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), a forward step towards enhancing biodiversity data sharing. This newly deployed tool seamlessly integrates with the GBIF test environment, aiming to facilitate rigorous testing and validation of datasets before their inclusion in the global GBIF network.The IPT serves as...

GBIF invites current GBIF participants (both voting and associate) to submit concept notes for project funding through the Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (CESP), which enables collaboration between GBIF participants to address identified needs at regional and global levels.The call aligns with the GBIF Capacity Development Framework. It focuses on enhancing...

Tuesday, 9th April 2024, 09.00-14.30 is the official launch of the Swedish national platform for subsea image analysis (SUBSIM).SUBSIM supports research and monitoring in marine ecosystems with open-source services for subsea image analysis. The platform is part of Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure (SBDI).Read more about the launch and SUBSIM.

A new version of the Nordic Microalgae website is now accessible! Including major taxonomic updates and new features such as species occurrence maps sourced from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).The update includes a new web-interface and a major update of the taxonomic backbone, now following current accepted names in...

Interested in ecology & biodiversity databases? Temporary employment at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences, Stockholm University. Might be interesting for a wide diversity of people, including both PhD and MSc students.The position will be associated with the Swedish Biodiversity Database Inventory (SBDI; https://biodiversitydata.se/). The focus of the...

The call for submissions to the 2024 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge is now open with the aim of recognizing innovative tools, both new and existing, that leverage biodiversity data from the GBIF network to advance open science in support of research and policy.An expert jury will judge entries on their relevance, novelty and quality...

The SBDI consortium welcomes everyone within the scientific community who wants to develop and ride the wave of data-driven research. Ecology research has not yet reached the big data revolution, while the forthcoming ‘data deluge’ creates many challenges for researchers in fields of biodiversity, ecology, conservation biology and systematics.This two-day conference, January...

Plankton Toolbox is now accessible in version 1.4.1, designed for both Windows and MacOS, with dedicated versions for both Intel and M1 processors. The Plankton Toolbox is a free tool for aquatic scientists, and others, working with environmental monitoring related to phyto- and zooplankton.The latest release incorporates an updated counting...

The DTO-BioFlow project announce an open call for marine biodiversity data holders who can contribute to the development by providing sustained and long-term biodiversity data for the EU DTO.They are looking for international networks, citizen science networks, research institutes, universities, NGOs, etc working within marine biodiversity domain, interested in sharing...

Researchers within the MARCO-BOLO-project seeking collaboration and long-term biodiversity data in order to understanding and analysing multidecadal trends of coastal and marine biodiversity at the European scale.In a new collaborative study, they aim to (a) compile comprehensive marine biodiversity time series in Europe to (b) disentangle the major patterns and...

The SBDI consortium welcomes everyone within the scientific community who wants to develop and ride the wave of data-driven research. Ecology research has not yet reached the big data revolution, while the forthcoming ‘data deluge’ creates many challenges for researchers in fields of biodiversity, ecology, conservation biology and systematics.This two-day conference invites the...

The work on a new portal for Swedish Research Data has begun. This portal is one of the major goals in the Swedish National Data Service’s (SND) mission 2023–26. SBDI and GBIF Sweden are important collaboration partners and data sources for the project. The portal will make it easier for...

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has published a report shedding light on the returns yielded by investments in their data infrastructure. The report, titled “Unveiling the Value: The Return on Investments in GBIF,” highlights the wide-ranging impact of GBIF’s efforts on both scientific advancement and societal progress.The report emphasizes...

There is now an updated version of a guide to publishing sequence-based data. It is a practical guide for holders of genomic and metagenomic information, to include recommendations for sharing occurrence records based on DNA-based studies of the world’s oceans and seas.This guide will teach you the principles and approaches...

Nu kan du nominera en lämplig person att ingå i SBDI:s styrgrupp. Styrgruppen ska ha en bred sammansättning och kompetens och ska verka för en optimal utveckling, drift och förvaltning av SBDI som en nationell forskningsinfrastruktur. Now you can nominate a suitable person to be part of SBDI’s steering group....

The Nordic Working Group for Biodiversity (NBM) funds Nordic collaborative projects aimed at stemming the loss of biodiversity. In 2024, NBM will prioritise applications from projects working towards the new biodiversity targets, as well as projects dealing with nature and wildlife crime, the sustainable use of existing buildings, forestry and...

GobyTrack citizen science challenge launched in Koster Seafloor ObservatoryWe have a new challenge for you, called “GobyTrack”. Here, we need your help to monitor the spread of an invasive fish along the Swedish coastline. In order to achieve this goal we need you to identify fish and crab species in...

A new version of Plankton Toolbox is now available.The new version (1.4.0) of the plankton counting program Plankton Toolbox is available for both Windows and MacOS. The release includes an update of the counting module and several minor fixes. In addition the NOMP 2022 biovolume list, which includes information from the...

On Samernas nationaldag (The Sami National Day), we want to draw attention to two datasets that SBDI mobilizes and that come from the Sami community.These data sets are:• Ájtte (“nature of the mountains”-collection, including: insects, birds, mammals, fish, fungi, minerals, rocks and botanicals.• Forests and Sami Museum (specimens and observations...

During 2022 and the start of 2023, SMHI has published four new datasets from the SHARK database.It concerns time series from national and regional monitoring programs for vegetated bottoms (Epibenthos), as well as time series from national programs for ringed seal (Pusa hispida) and picoplankton. Previously published time series have...

The SBDI team for genetic biodiversity data has published a paper on the Swedish ASV portal in BMC Bioinformatics. Now you can contribute your own datasets.The portal is an interface to SBDI records of DNA barcode sequences (Amplicon Sequence Variants; ASVs) and associated species occurrences that derive from high throughput...

Are you interested in the possibilities with SBDI? Meet researchers from the SBDI-community and the SBDI-office at the Oikos meeting in Gothenburg.Here are two workshops you can attend:SBDI user workshop – How to publish your metabarcoding dataModelling the distribution of alien species in SwedenThere is no time set, but given...

On December 7-19, 2022, COP-15, the UN Conference on Biological Diversity, takes place in Montreal, Canada. So far only tentative negotiations to halt the loss of biodiversity.At the meeting, the parties must agree on a new global framework and new international goals for biological diversity. The ambition is to stop...

Vikten av biologisk mångfald för alla levande varelser på jorden, inklusive mänskligheten, kan inte överskattas. Utan rik biologisk mångfald och robusta ekosystem hotas vår vatten- och livsmedelsförsörjning, och vår förmåga att bekämpa framtidens sjukdomar och epidemier försvagas. Dessutom är klimatets och biologiska mångfaldens välmående starkt förbundna, eftersom välfungerande ekosystem reglerar...

We are happy to welcome Margret Steinthorsdottir as the new Director of SBDI.Margret is originally from Iceland and moved to Denmark as a teenager. She holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Geology/Palaeontology from the University of Copenhagen. After a few years in Chicago, USA, where she worked as a...