As one of the key components of biodiversity change and its associated negative consequences for society, biological invasion demands policy supported by a solid platform of data. These data must - like many other areas of evidence needed for policy - meet multiple criteria, such as effective integration across diverse data types and sources, the adoption of a broadly accepted vocabulary and mechanisms that smoothly enable the absorption, transfer and use of new data into policy reporting. With indicators of biological invasion as the endpoint of this process, the demand for such indicators has challenged the invasion science community to build and deliver such a process. Although still a work in progress, biodiversity data standards and data tools have been integral to the progress made towards delivering robust and sustainable indicators of biological invasion. They have also facilitated the integration of data that makes it possible to overcome a number of longstanding conceptual and analytical problems with estimating invasion trends.  I will present some of the developments that demonstrate the advances that biodiversity informatics has enabled, connecting the science and policy on biological invasions.

indicators, invasive alien species, essential biodiversity variables, trends

Melodie A. McGeoch

Biodiversity_Next 2019