|
Embargoed until: 2 P.M. EDT
NSF PR 00-67 - September 28, 2000
This material is available primarily for archival
purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information
may be out of date; please see current contact information
at media
contacts.
Biodiversity Databases: Biodiversity Information on
Every Desktop
Access to information about the world's biodiversity
is badly needed by a wide range of users, say resource
managers, policy-makers, conservationists, scientists
and the general public. In order to bring such information
to the Internet, where it will be freely accessible
to anyone, a consortium of 28 interested countries
and intergovernmental organizations is coordinating
plans to form the Global Biodiversity Information
Facility (GBIF). GBIF will consist of a series of
interconnected databases containing information about
the world's living organisms, from bacteria to plants
to mammals.
"GBIF will be an outstanding tool of great value,"
according to James Edwards, deputy assistant director
for biological sciences at the National Science Foundation
(NSF). Edwards chairs the interim steering committee
for GBIF. In this week's issue of the journal Science,
Edwards and coauthors discuss the GBIF. The current
data about biodiversity are either scattered in many
local databases, or reside on paper or other media
not amenable to interactive searching. GBIF is a new
framework for facilitating the digitization of biodiversity
data, for compiling the data into searchable databases
(both existing and newly formed ones), and for ensuring
compatibility among these databases. In concert with
other existing efforts, there will be developed, through
GBIF,a complete Catalog of the Names of Known Organisms
and search engines to mine the vast quantities of
biodiversity data.
Biodiversity is distributed all over the earth, with
the highest concentration in tropical regions, especially
in developing countries, and in the oceans. In contrast,
scientific information about biodiversity is largely
concentrated in major centers in developed countries,
especially in the scientific collections of the world's
natural history museums, herbaria, and microorganismal
repositories. At present, it is more likely that information
on the plants of many regions of Africa is stored
in an herbarium in Europe, for example, rather than
in its source country, explains Edwards. Through GBIF,
the intent is to change that, by making the data available
to anyone, anywhere, who has access to the Internet.
The sustainable use and management of biodiversity
will require that information about it be available
when and where that information is needed by decision
makers and scientists alike, Edwards says. Because
biodiversity information is not immediately at hand,
it is often not applied in policy or management decisions
that affect the organisms involved, nor is that information
readily accessible by research scientists.
At the heart of GBIF will be a catalog of the scientific
names of all the world's species. Longer-term goals
for GBIF are to develop both a digital library of
biodiversity knowledge drawn from information available
in print libraries and "Species Bank," a compilation
of facts about each individual species.
The target date for establishing GBIF is early in 2001.
GBIF will be open and freely available to anyone with
access to the World Wide Web. Most of its activities
will be carried out within member countries, supported
by their national funding programs.
"GBIF will aid in advancing scientific research in
a host of areas, including systematics, conservation
biology, ecology, agriculture, biomedicine, and environmental
management," says Edwards. "It will serve the economic
and quality-of-life interests of society and will
provide a basis from which our knowledge of the natural
world can grow rapidly and in a manner that avoids
duplication of effort and expenditure."
|
|