Participation of the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia in GB32 Colombia and Living Data 2025

From 16—20 October 2025, the 32nd Meeting of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility Governing Board (GB32) and associated events took place in Bogotá, Colombia, bringing together representatives of GBIF member countries, partner organizations, and experts in biodiversity informatics.

Dr. Salza Palpurina, as part of the GBIF Europe and Central Asia Regional Support and a representative of the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia (NMNHS), took part in all planned activities during GB32: first as a trainee in the capacity-building sessions, then as a facilitator during the Global Nodes Meeting (18 October), and later, on 19 October, she presented a progress report on the work done by GBIF ECA Regional Support team during the first meeting day of GBIF Governing Board Meeting.

Immediately following GB32, the Living Data 2025 Conference gathered researchers, developers, and data stewards to discuss the sustainable management and reuse of open biodiversity data. Within this event, the NMNHS-BAS representative delivered a presentation titled:“Mapping nested vegetation plot data to Darwin Core and the Humboldt Extension: challenges and open questions”, highlighting the difficulties of structuring and publishing nested vegetation plot datasets under the Sampling Event data model using the Darwin Core standard and Humboldt Extension. The talk drew attention to key implementation issues—such as representing plot hierarchies, defining sampling effort across spatial scales, and balancing interoperability with ecological integrity—and invited community discussion toward developing best practices for complex ecological data.

See the full programme of GB32: https://gb32.gbif.org/programme. More information about Living Data 2025: https://www.livingdata2025.com/.