DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The datasets presented in this study can be found in online
repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession
number(s) can be found in the article/Supplementary Material.
Alternatively, the dataset can be accessed via the Freshwater
Biodiversity Information System (freshwaterbiodiversity.org).In South Africa, anthropogenic pressures such as water over-abstraction, invasive
species impacts, land-use change, pollution, and climate change have caused
widespread deterioration of the health of river ecosystems. This comes at great
cost to both people and biodiversity, with freshwater fishes ranked as the country’s
most threatened species group. Effective conservation and management of South
Africa’s freshwater ecosystems requires access to reliable and comprehensive
biodiversity data. Despite the existence of a wealth of freshwater biodiversity data,
access to these data has been limited. The Freshwater Biodiversity Information
System (FBIS) was built to address this knowledge gap by developing an intuitive,
accessible and reliable platform for freshwater biodiversity data in South Africa.
The FBIS hosts high quality, high accuracy biodiversity data that are freely available
to a wide range of stakeholders, including researchers, conservation practitioners
and policymakers. We describe how the system is being used to provide
freshwater fish data to a national conservation decision-support tool—The
Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE) National
Environmental Screening Tool (NEST). The NEST uses empirical and modelled
biodiversity data to guide Environmental Impact Assessment Practitioners in
conducting environmental assessments of proposed developments.
Occurrence records for 34 threatened freshwater fishes occurring in South
Africa were extracted from the FBIS and verified by taxon specialists, resulting
in 6 660 records being used to generate modelled and empirical national distribution (or sensitivity) layers. This represents the first inclusion of freshwater
biodiversity data in the NEST, and future iterations of the tool will incorporate
additional freshwater taxa. This case study demonstrates how the FBIS fills a pivotal
role in the data-to-decision pipeline through supporting data-driven conservation
and management decisions at a national level.Funding for the development of the Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) was provided by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation Funding for the development of the Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) was provided by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation. This work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa and the NRF-SAIAB DSI/ NRF Research Chair in Inland Fisheries and Freshwater Ecology.http://www.frontiersin.org/Environmental_Scienceam2024Zoology and EntomologySDG-14:Life below wate