19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Interoperability

Bioinformatics Enabling Biodiversity Science and Societal Benefits

Thomas Hermann (thomas_hermann@usgs.gov), Gladys A. Cotter (gladys_cotter@usgs.gov), Thomas Lahr (tom_lahr@usgs.gov)
U.S. Geological Survey-Biological Informatics Office, USA
Presenting: John M. Hill (hillmcj@hotmail.com), World Data Center of Biodiversity and Ecology, USA

Numerous biological issues are at the forefront of societal issues for today's scientists and decision makers to address. Of the many new diseases (i.e., Hanta Virus, West Nile Disease, etc.) approximately 75 percent can affect both humans and wildlife. The number and impact of invasive species are increasing. Biodiversity is being reduced and native plants and animals are being added to the threatened and endangered list. Internationally, these biological issues are annually costing billions of dollars. Of the vast amount of biological data collected each year to study these issues around the world, most of it is inaccessible, because it is not digital, standardized, and/or archived with appropriate metadata.

The recent designation of the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) as the World Data Center for Biodiversity and Ecology (WDCBE) has provided increased focus and emphasis on raw biological data and how best to best find, prioritize, acquire, standardize, integrate, and deliver these data and information to scientists. This presentation describes specific solutions being developed and implemented by the WDCBE so that: biological and ecological data are easily available, data quality issues are resolved, compatibility with existing national (i.e., NBII) and international initiatives (i.e., IABIN, GBIF) is maintained, and data sustainability into the future is ensured. Initial solutions include development and deployment of: data submission summary tools and portlets (web services), an NBII web resources input tool, NBII clearinghouse metadata, and a strategy to address datasets that are lack Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)-compliant metadata, or any metadata at all.

Biologists and ecologists are also actively developing sophisticated models to predict various biological events (i.e., species distributions and the spread of wildlife diseases and invasive species). Through new enabling data standardization and distribution initiatives, critical biological data are becoming more accessible to the modeling community.

WDCBE and NBII projects that demonstrate the successful use of these recently available digital biological data include the: web accessibility of the human/ wildlife disease data, modeling of species distributions, web accessibility of migratory and waterfowl bird count data, characterization of threatened and endangered species habitats, and the digitization, standardization, integration, and analysis of international natural history collections to select new protected areas with a focus on biodiversity. WDCBE staff are also developing a methodology to identify, verify, track, and quantify the value added benefits obtained through data accessibility associated with WDCBE and NBII standardized and integrated biological data initiatives.