In late March, Leiden hosted the third Empowering Biodiversity Research (EBR III) conference at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center. This two-day event focused on using biodiversity data to drive policy decisions. Attendees delved into biodiversity data standards and tools, learning about the latest developments in Biodiversity Informatics globally and locally.

Among the participants were B-Cubed partners from the project’s coordinating institution Meise Botanic Garden. They informed the Biodiversity (Informatics) community of the objectives of our project and our recent progress, as well as sought collaboration opportunities with fellow researchers and stakeholders.

On March 25, B-Cubed's coordinator Quentin Groom delivered a talk titled 'Biodiversity Building Blocks for Policy’. It outlined the project's goal of leveraging the vast amount of biodiversity data from heterogeneous sources in order to rapidly produce reliable and up-to-date indicators and models, which are instrumental for the attempt to mitigate the global biodiversity crisis. He also provided updates on our progress in establishing common and accepted indicators for assessing biodiversity changes across different policy contexts and scales.

B-Cubed was also presented by Lissa Breugelmans through a poster on the project’s work to develop a workflow for the calculation of the Phylogenetic Diversity indicator.

'Workflow for the calculation of the phylogenetic diversity indicators'

Promotional project materials were available for everyone attending the conference throughout its entire duration.