blitz the gap
Graduate students: Apply to participate in the CIEE Living Data Project working group “Blitz the Gap”
Group Leaders: Laura Pollock (McGill), Katherine Hébert (McGill), David Hunt (McGill), Diane Srivastava (UBC)
Date of Working Group: April 7-11th, 2025 (full time)
In person location: University of BC in Vancouver and McGill University in Montréal
Deadline: February 17, 2025
Apply here : closed
Canadian biodiversity is likely rapidly changing with climate and land-use change, but we don’t have enough data to be able to detect reliable trends for most species. In some cases, we are missing estimates of the range extent for species, their finescale habitat requirements or northward range limits. Why does this matter? Because management and conservation depend on good spatial information on species such as assessments of at-risk species, predictions of climate-change impacts on range shifts, and calculations of biodiversity indicators and ecosystem services.
Fortunately, we have a rapidly growing source of data with iNaturalist, which offers the potential for filling some of these data gaps. However, most iNaturalist records occur near roads and in populated areas (Geurts et al. 2023, Ecosphere 14:e4582) and cover less diversity than traditional sampling such as herbarium collections (Eckert et al. 2024, Nature Communications 15:7586). The question is whether we can guide sampling towards the places where we are missing data.
The aim of this working group is to set up ‘challenges’ to help guide people on where to sample during a Canadian-wide bioblitz ‘Blitz the Gap’ happening this June (https://blitzthegap.org/). Students will work in groups to decide what ‘challenge’ they want to address
Each group can choose their own challenge to encourage people to sample places or species they want to know more about. We will suggest a few challenges, such as sampling unsampled areas and undersampled taxa, looking for range-shifting species beyond their usual range, resampling sites that were historically sampled, surveying Key Biodiversity Areas, or sites that have undergone restoration projects - but we welcome any challenge ideas! The resulting sampling priority maps will be hosted on our website and/or integrated into an iNat project directly.
The working group will be held 7-11th April simultaneously at the University of BC and McGill University. All expenses (including travel, accommodation, meals) will be covered for graduate students at a Canadian university attending the node closest to their location, with the exception that travel and accommodation will not be covered for students living in Montreal or BC’s Lower Mainland. Students will work with peers and experts to answer key questions in biodiversity and have the opportunity to co-author publications. Students may also be eligible for two course credits.
This is a great way to put your LDP skills to work on data wrangling, data synthesis ideas, data management and collaboration! We will have expert iNat users in attendance to help us out.
Students must be currently registered in a graduate program in ecology, environmental science, evolution or a related discipline in a Canadian university. Students should be enrolled in a CIEE (Canadian Institute of Ecology and Evolution) member university or they or their supervisor must be a current CSEE (Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution) member. The highest priority will go to students who have already taken the Living Data project courses “Synthesis statistics for ecology and evolution” and “Scientific collaboration in ecology and evolution” with second priority to students who commit to register to take these courses in fall 2025. Together with these two courses, participation in this working group will fulfill most of the requirements for a CIEE Certificate in Synthetic and Collaborative Science.