USEit internal workshop
The internal workshop of USEit took place online on 18 January 2023. During the workshop, the USEit team discussed the main outcomes of the survey about distribution and abundance data availability on non-indigenous species (NIS) in Italy. These results were collated within a document that the team collaboratively amended during the workshop, revising the operational proposals suggested as guidelines and outlined on the basis of the information gathered from the survey. During the workshop, the discussion focused on the need to use standardised monitoring protocols for NIS data collection and to share data and metadata according to the Open Science principles. These operational proposals are particularly essential to address the NIS issue, which has important scientific, economic and social implications and must therefore be tackled using integrated and shared approaches. In fact, the key objectives of USEit are built on such principles. The guidelines reviewed and approved during this workshop will be further discussed with national NIS experts during the next workshop of the project.
USEit Workshop with external experts
A participatory workshop was held on 4 July 2023 in Rome, at the CNR headquarters, for the harmonisation of data collection procedures on IAS (invasive alien species) in terrestrial and aquatic environments. External experts were involved in the evaluation and analysis of the project's proposed guidelines. The workshop brought together experts in the collection and organisation of IAS data obtained in different study areas and related to different habitat types: terrestrial, marine, inland and brackish waters. It is the combination of species, habitats and purposes that determines a rich variety of data types, as confirmed by the national survey carried out within the activities of WP2 of the USEit project and distributed to Italian researchers dealing with IAS. Such variety complicates the task of creating databases that can be fully and rigorously used by the scientific community. The evaluation of the various data collection and/or acquisition procedures would lead to their harmonisation through the finalisation of specific guidelines suggested by the USEit project.
USEit è un progetto finanziato dal Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
