Heading Off Mass Extinction

To prevent a new mass extinction of the world’s animal and plant life, scientists need to understand threats to biodiversity, where they occur and how quickly change is happening. To do that, they need reliable and accessible data.

A new study by a UC Santa Barbara conservation scientist and his international colleagues reveals the paucity of such data. According to co-author Benjamin Halpern, a professor at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, key information on important threats to biodiversity — such as invasive species, logging, bush meat harvesting and illegal wildlife trade — is lacking. The team’s results appear in the journal Science.

“I went into this project expecting to find dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of amazing data that could be easily used to understand threats to global biodiversity,” said Halpern, who is also deputy director of UCSB’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. “The drumbeat of news stories about ‘big data’ and the information revolution would have you think we are awash in data. It turns out the reality is the opposite.”

- See more at: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2016/016714/heading-mass-extinction#sthash.4wF1ydW9.dpuf