Preserving the Scientific Achievements of Reserves and National Parks Affected by the War

The war has put Ukraine's territories, and all living organisms with them, under direct threat. But there is another danger: the loss of scientific knowledge about it. Data on biodiversity collected decades before the full-scale invasion may simply disappear if it is not digitized and accessible.

Nadiia Skobel and her team are digitizing bibliographic references to species from southern Ukraine, turning them into open FAIR data. All these materials were processed, standardized in the international Darwin Core format and published in the public domain through the Global Biodiversity Information System (GBIF). Today, the rescued data is freely available to scientists, conservationists and policymakers around the world. This is an important basis for assessing the impact of the war on Ukraine's biodiversity and planning further conservation actions.

This Urban Seminar will outline the main results of the project to digitize pre-war data on Ukraine's biodiversity, its importance for the protection of scientific heritage, and its role in post-war recovery. The project is an example of how the archiving of scientific knowledge is turning into a strategic tool for protecting the national scientific heritage and the basis for its post-war restoration.

Urban Seminar will be held in a workshop format. Researchers are invited to discuss scholarly projects, research at various stages of development, and completed research that is being prepared for publication.

Participation in the Urban Seminar requires preliminary reading and discussion of the researcher's text. If you would like to join the Seminar, please email Maryana Mazurak (m.mazurak@lvivcenter.org), and we will send you the materials in advance.