Summary of knowledge gaps

The knowledge gaps workshops dealt with biodiversity under the following headings:

• Habitats and vegetation
• Invertebrates
• Marine
• Mammals, freshwater fish and birds
• Plants

A brief summary of each workshop is presented below.

Habitats and vegetation

Needs here relate to developing new national frameworks to deliver significant benefits for land use, conservation and strategic planning, and lead to greater efficiencies in the long term. These national frameworks include the development of a National Habitat Map, Vegetation Classification System, and landscape spatial data infrastructure.

Invertebrates

A great deal has been done to describe Ireland’s invertebrates, but a large body of work still remains for some of the more complicated groups. Capacity building to deal with these groups is required, but there is established expertise within the country which should be utilised to fill some key gaps in the short term.

Marine

A huge body of work remains to document Ireland’s marine biodiversity resource. It will be challenging to make inroads in this within the next 10 years unless significant resources are dedicated to it. There are however, some immediate opportunities for improving our knowledge by availing of existing expertise – these opportunities should be used.

Mammals, freshwater fish & birds

Knowledge of these groups has increased significantly over the last few decades. Knowledge of the composition and distribution is fairly well known, and future requirements relate more to tracking change and gaining a better understanding of ecosystem function to inform management. The maintenance and support of the citizen science network is an issue.

Plants

Knowledge of plants is patchy. Vascular plants are well studied; however, systems for tracking change are needed. Knowledge of lichens is improving, but little is known about other fungi. The ability to make significant progresson expanding the knowledge base of a perceived difficult group through targeted funding and action is clearly demonstrated by bryophytes. We have recently moved from a position of poor bryophyte knowledge to having a comprehensive database of records and a national conservation assessment.

General issues

An issue central to filling knowledge gaps of many aspects of biodiversity was capacity building. Research and surveying tend to deal with conspicuous biological groups which are accessible to the majority of recorders. The greatest body of biological diversity, however, occurs within the biological groups of the smaller, less conspicuous organisms for which there is only patchy knowledge. For these groups, the challenge lies in developing the expertise to identify and describe the organisms that occur in Ireland.

Another issue common to many aspects of biodiversity was the need for an Integrated Land Information Management System, linking biodiversity data with environmental and land use information. Such an integrated system would enhance the value of individual datasets by providing important contextual information and provide enormous added value.

The need for additional national monitoring programmes was raised. It was acknowledged that these should build upon existing national programmes were possible and should be designed to delivery multiple outputs to achieve greatest efficiencies.

The identification of specific gaps

Arising from the knowledge gaps workshops, and based on the overview presented in the Appendices of the report, a number of specific gaps were identified by the experts and workshop participants. These are presented as the key gaps. If filled, these would make a significant contribution to expanding our knowledge base on Ireland’s biological diversity over the next 10 years. The identification of these gaps does not imply that these are the only knowledge gaps that should be addressed over that timescale.