JRS Biodiversity Foundation

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About JRS

The J.R.S. Biodiversity Foundation is motivated to help protect the earth’s diverse species to improve the quality of life, better manage natural systems, sustain human health, and maintain economic stability.

The earth's species are declining at an alarming rate. Industrial development and population growth are leading to an unacceptable extinction rate among species. Although there is growing concern for the problem, a lack of appreciation for the value of biological diversity is still a barrier to addressing its loss.

Approximately 1.8 million species have been identified over the past 300 years. However, it is estimated that there are well over 20 million species yet to be identified. The knowledge about the species that have been named and the value of our planet's biodiversity rests in the hands of relatively few experts, many from industrialized countries. This knowledge often tends to be inaccessible to local communities, conservation practitioners, policy makers, and the general public. The Foundation hopes, through the projects it funds to make biodiversity information more widely available to users of scientific data, policy makers, and the public.

An important way to make biodiversity information more widely available is through the support of biodiversity science. Biodiversity science is interdisciplinary in its nature, and as it becomes increasingly data-driven it requires collaboration between environmental biologists, computer scientists, and network engineers from around the planet. The field of biodiversity informatics is a multi-contributor process beginning with methods and activities associated with data collection and data management, and ending in the application of derived knowledge for science and society. This includes technology approaches to collecting and interpreting biological information, as well as mechanisms to improve communication, and the skills to use data and tools between disciplines. Therefore, the aim of the JRS Biodiversity Foundation is to support interdisciplinary activities in biodiversity-informatics training and development, primarily executed via collaborations.