Das Projekt "Global mountain biodiversity assessment coordination office 2008-2010" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Basel, Botanisches Institut, Abteilung Pflanzenökologie durchgeführt. The Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) is one of the internationally acting cross-cutting research networks of DIVERSITAS. GMBA acts as a platform of the international mountain biodiversity research (www.gmba.unibas.ch), currently listing more than 700 active partners worldwide. It aims to synthesise often fragmented knowledge, organize workshops/symposia and promote participation in international research projects. GMBA has also developed internationally accorded research guidelines for specific fields and encourages collaborative research programmes throughout the world and advocates the open access philosophy of GBIF and e-mining of mountain biodiversity data. The GMBA office is coordinating a network of field experiments worldwide, aiming to quantify the influences of land use and biodiversity on catchment value in steep mountian terrain, with successfully funded Joint Research Projects in Bolivia, Georgia, Austria, and upcomming projects in France, Switzerland and China. Main products of this funding period will include: - Global mountain biodiversity data portal and promotion of open access of geo-referenced mountain biodiversity data, in collaboration with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in Copenhagen, Denmark; - publication of a synthesis book on mountain biodiversity data mining and results of comparative data-mining of GMBA data expert; - synthesis of results of the world-wide network of field experiments on land use and biodiversity, and catchment value in mountains (in a special journal issue or synthesis volume); - GMBA will link the mountain biodiversity community with the International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (IMoSEB), an international scientific biodiversity assessment panel. - organisation of the 2nd GMBA open science conference on mountain biodiversity in 2010. This will be the 10-year anniversary of GMBA under Swiss leadership.