Zooplankton Digitization in Latin America: A New Look at 60 Years of Zooplankton in Chile in the Context of Climate Change
December 19th, 2024On December 10 and 11, 2024, at the IFOP headquarters in Valparaíso, the Workshop “Zooplankton Digitization in Latin America: A New Look at 60 Years of Zooplankton in Chile in the Context of Climate Change” was held within the framework of the CORFO goal “Digital Plankton Library”, of the DPS (Sustainable Productive Development) project “Strengthening the Climate Change Monitoring System (SAPO)” and the IFOP-UV collaboration agreement. This event was organized by the zooplankton team of the Oceanography Section of IFOP, made up of Dr. Jessica Bonicelli, Dr. Katty Donoso, Francisca Osorio, Débora Albornoz, Yanara Figueroa and Constanza Sandoval, together with the collaboration of Dr. Johanna Medellín, professor at the University of Valparaíso (UV).
Gonzalo Pereira, Executive Director of IFOP, welcomed the participants of the Workshop and highlighted the great importance of the digitalization of historical zooplankton samples of IFOP, as well as the collaboration with other working groups.
During the Workshop, prominent researchers in the digitalization of plankton samples from Latin America, as well as from other countries around the world, met. The excellent work being done at IFOP with the ordering, organization, curation and digitalization of historical zooplankton samples, which have been collected since the 1960s throughout the Chilean sea, was highlighted. Likewise, collaboration networks were established and the scope, experiences and research work related to the automated analysis of digitalized zooplankton samples were made known.
We had the participation of leading researchers in the field of zooplankton sample digitalization. Dr. Rubén Escribano (IMO-UdeC), Dr. Johanna Medellín (UV), Patricia Ayón (IMARPE), Dr. Macarena Díaz-Astudillo (COPAS COASTAL-UBB), Dr. Marcelo Gutiérrez (COPAS COASTAL-UdeC), Dr. Pamela Fierro (IMO), Mauricio Díaz-Trombert (PUCV), Caroline Nguyen (La Rochelle Université), presented us with the scope, projections and work in the automated analysis of plankton.
In addition, the members of the Workshop organizing committee, Yanara Figueroa (IFOP), Francisca Osorio (IFOP) and Dr. Jessica Bonicelli (IFOP), presented the progress in the curation of the samples and the first results of the research work that has been done at IFOP, using the automation methodology.
The Workshop was a success in terms of collaboration, learning and future projections, and it is intended to continue with the collaboration networks between IFOP and academia on the subject of Zooplankton digitalization, in order to resolve and relate the spatial and temporal changes that the zooplankton community has undergone, which in a context of climate change would help us understand and explain processes relevant to the fishing sector. It should be noted that these zooplankton samples from the historical IFOP collection represent a valuable source for the development of academic theses.
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