Enhancing biodiversity conservation, the Mt. Malindang [Philippines] bio informatics way

Accessible information greatly contributes to the success of any ongoing or future undertaking in support of sustainable development activities such as biodiversity conservation. Thus, Freire et al. (USP) designed a database to handle voluminous data generated by the different research areas, particularly in Mt. Malindang's Biodiversity Research Program. These data were placed in an electronic system, easily enabling policy makers, planners, and future biodiversity researchers to access and analyze them. On the biodiversity data, the system contained forms that allow researchers or authorized users to easily encode or input biodiversity data from their respective researches. Its advantage over other traditional in putting systems was the specific design for biodiversity data. This resulted in faster data input time and lesser errors in data encoding. The Mt. Malindang Biodiversity Information System had an easy-to-use query form where users can generate reports and information by simply clicking on specified fields. The created system contained the biodiversity data for both the biophysical and socioeconomic aspects of Mt. Malindang, which was something new in the Philippines. Most current similar projects (i.e., Species 2000, ASEAN Regional Center for Biodiversity Conservation) focused only on biotic and nonbiotic aspects but did not incorporate socioeconomic aspects of biodiversity into the database. The developed technology served as a tool to preserve and generate additional information on biodiversity conservation and management. This tool would greatly help in the formulation of informed decisions to preserve and conserve the natural resources. In light of the growing number of studies that have utilized biodiversity databases in modeling the environment, the researchers recommend that new technologies and global standards be further explored and if possible, enhance information systems capability to handle biodiversity information not only for Mt. Malindang but the whole Mindanao as well.