Discover Life in America

Last updated September 10, 2024

Discover Life in America is a non-profit NGO founded in 1998. It is based in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and is located near the mountain resort city of Gatlinburg in Sevier County, Tennessee.^[1] The primary function of DLIA is to help administer the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, a joint effort with scientists and volunteers worldwide to create an inventory of all the living species located in GSMNP. This has been cited as one of the largest efforts of its kind, and has been compared to such efforts as the human genome project in terms of scope and potential effect on the study of biodiversity.^[2] Since it had been established, 922 species new to science and 7,391 species new to the park have been added to the ATBI. There is an estimated 80,000 species currently in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Origin

The first attempt at an All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory was conducted by Daniel Janzen in the Guanacaste State of Costa Rica. Due to several political and financial reasons, though, the effort failed in 1996.^[3] In December 1997, a large group of scientists and interested administrators and educators gathered in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to discuss starting an ATBI for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Soon after the meeting in December 1997, Discover Life in America was created as the administrative organization for the ATBI of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. This was because the Great Smoky Mountains is considered to have some of the most diverse habitats in the world.^[4] The scientists gathered originally estimated that there were 99,000 species of life and in 1998 only about 10% of that estimate were known species.^[5] DLIA was formed to coordinate research with the Park’s administration, and to allow for fundraising and the collection of tax-exempt donations.^[6]

Work and Research

DLIA currently has one full-time employee, and two part-timers. They rely heavily on the aid of volunteers and interns year-round. With respect to the ATBI, DLIA works with scientists to both encourage interest in the national park’s biodiversity and provide them with resources to aid their research.^[7] DLIA maintains a mini-grant program to help fund research relevant to the ATBI and their mission. Other resources DLIA provides for scientists include the arranging of volunteers, arranging housing and general logistics for researchers, and providing lab space and necessary equipment for both fieldwork and lab use.

Science Advisory Panel

A science advisory panel is organized for DLIA in order to provide advice and support to the NGO. The panel currently consists of Dr. Sylvie Earle of National Geographic, Dr. Dan Janzen from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy of the Heinz Center, Dr. Ron Pulliam from the University of Georgia, Dr. Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Dr. Edward O. Wilson from Harvard University.

Related Research Articles

Sevier County is a county of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 98,380. Its county seat and largest city is Sevierville. Sevier County comprises the Sevierville, TN Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Knoxville-Morristown-Sevierville, TN Combined Statistical Area.

Gatlinburg is a mountain resort city in Sevier County, Tennessee. It is located 39 miles (63 km) southeast of Knoxville and had a population of 3,944 at the 2010 Census and a U.S. Census population of 3,577 in 2020. It is a popular vacation resort, as it rests on the border of Great Smoky Mountains National Park along U.S. Route 441, which connects to Cherokee, North Carolina, on the southeast side of the national park. Prior to incorporation, the town was known as White Oak Flats, or simply White Oak.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a national park of the United States in the southeast, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The border between the two states runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park. The Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 13 million visitors in 2023, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Smoky Mountains</span> American mountain range along North Carolina/Tennessee border

The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains and form part of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province. The range is sometimes called the Smoky Mountains, and the name is commonly shortened to the Smokies. The Smokies are best known as the home of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which protects most of the range. The park was established in 1934 and, with over 11 million visits per year, is the most visited national park in the United States.

A BioBlitz, also written without capitals as bioblitz, is an intense period of biological surveying in an attempt to record all the living species within a designated area. Groups of scientists, naturalists, and volunteers conduct an intensive field study over a continuous time period. There is a public component to many BioBlitzes, with the goal of getting the public interested in biodiversity. To encourage more public participation, these BioBlitzes are often held in urban parks or nature reserves close to cities. Research into the best practices for a successful BioBlitz has found that collaboration with local natural history museums can improve public participation. As well, BioBlitzes have been shown to be a successful tool in teaching post-secondary students about biodiversity.

The Gatlinburg Bypass is a 3.6-mile-long (5.8 km) bypass road around the resort city of Gatlinburg in Sevier County, Tennessee, at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It runs between the Great Smoky Mountains Parkway north of the city to Newfound Gap Road (US 441), the main route through the national park. It is owned and maintained by the National Park Service (NPS) and serves as a bypass around the business district of Gatlinburg for easier access to the national park. It is also considered part of the longer Foothills Parkway, a National Parkway that traverses the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. The road provides overlooks with views of the city of Gatlinburg and the mountains beyond. The Gatlinburg Bypass opened to traffic in 1968.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to over 1,500 different species of flowering plants—more than any other North American national park, earning it the nickname of the "Wildflower National Park". Every spring in late April, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the site of the week-long annual spring wildflower pilgrimage to celebrate this diversity. The park is also the site of the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory to inventory all the living organisms in the park. This article lists some of the Wildflowers of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, current threats and resources for further information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Cammerer</span> Mountain in the United States

Mount Cammerer is a mountain on the northeastern fringe of the Great Smoky Mountains, in the southeastern United States. The mountain is situated on the state line between Cocke County, Tennessee, and Haywood County, North Carolina. The Appalachian Trail traverses Cammerer's south slope, and a restored fire lookout at the summit offers panoramic views of the eastern Smokies, Cocke County, and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Sugarlands</span> Valley in the north-central Great Smoky Mountains

The Sugarlands is a valley in Tennessee within the north-central Great Smoky Mountains, located in the southeastern United States. Formerly home to a string of small Appalachian communities, the valley is now the location of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park headquarters and the Sugarlands Visitor Center. Lying just south of Gatlinburg, the Sugarlands is one of the park's most popular access points.

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is a free, online encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living species known to science. It aggregates content to form "page"s for every known species. Content is compiled from existing trusted databases which are curated by experts and it calls on the assistance of non-experts throughout the world. It includes video, sound, images, graphics, information on characteristics, as well as text. In addition, the Encyclopedia incorporates species-related content from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which digitizes millions of pages of printed literature from the world's major natural history libraries. The BHL digital content is indexed with the names of organisms using taxonomic indexing software developed by the Global Names project. The EOL project was initially backed by a US$50 million funding commitment, led by the MacArthur Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, who provided US$20 million and US$5 million, respectively. The additional US$25 million came from five cornerstone institutions—the Field Museum, Harvard University, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Smithsonian Institution. The project was initially led by Jim Edwards and the development team by David Patterson. Today, participating institutions and individual donors continue to support EOL through financial contributions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roaring Fork (Great Smoky Mountains)</span> Stream in Tennessee

Roaring Fork is a stream in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. Once the site of a small Appalachian community, today the stream's area is home to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail and the Roaring Fork Historic District.

Cataloochee is a valley in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, located in the Southeastern United States. Now a recreational and historic area within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cataloochee was once home to a substantial Appalachian community and Cherokee hunting ground.

Dashkin is a village in Astore, Pakistan. It is 85 km from Gilgit, the capital of Gilgit-Baltistan. It has over 5,000 inhabitants, primarily farmers and herdsmen.

Parataxonomy is a system of labor division for use in biodiversity research, in which the rough sorting tasks of specimen collection, field identification, documentation and preservation are conducted by primarily local, less specialized individuals, thereby alleviating the workload for the "alpha" or "master" taxonomist. Parataxonomy may be used to improve taxonomic efficiency by enabling more expert taxonomists to restrict their activity to the tasks that require their specialist knowledge and skills, which has the potential to expedite the rate at which new taxa may be described and existing taxa may be sorted and discussed. Parataxonomists generally work in the field, sorting collected samples into recognizable taxonomic units (RTUs) based on easily recognized features. The process can be used alone for rapid assessment of biodiversity.

An all-taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, is an attempt to document and identify all biological species living in some defined area, usually a park, reserve, or research area. The term was coined in 1993, in connection with an effort initiated by ecologist Daniel Janzen to document the diversity of the Guanacaste National Park in Costa Rica.

State Route 73 is west-north state highway in East Tennessee. For most of its length, it is an unsigned companion route to U.S. Route 321.

The 2016 Great Smoky Mountains wildfires, also known as the Gatlinburg wildfires, were a complex of wildfires which began in late November 2016. Some of the towns most impacted were Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, both near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The fires claimed at least 14 lives, injured 190, and is one of the largest natural disasters in the history of Tennessee.

SeaKeys is a large collaborative marine biodiversity project funded through the Foundational Biodiversity Information Program in South Africa. The purpose of the project is to collect and distribute genetic, species and ecosystem information relating to marine biodiversity in southern Africa, which may be used to support informed decision-making about the marine environment.

The Cherokee black-bellied salamander or Smoky Mountains black-bellied salamander is a species of lungless salamander in the family Plethodontidae. It is endemic to the eastern United States, where it is only known from the southern Appalachian Mountains.

References

↑ "About".
↑ Borenstein, Seth. "Counting Every Species In Smokies Is Planned." Chicago Tribune [Chicago] 18 Dec 1998, n. pag. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-12-18/news/9812180034_1_great-smokies-spiders-researchers>.
↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-24. Retrieved 2012-06-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
↑ MANSFIELD, DUNCAN. "Researchers preparing to start massive Smokies inventory." Associated Press State & Local Wire. (1998): n. page. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://dlia.org/sites/default/files/AP_ResearcherspreparingtostartmassiveSmokiesinventory.pdf Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine >.
↑ "Scientists try to record all organisms in the Smokies."Herald Sun [Durham] 07 May 2001, n. pag. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://dlia.org/sites/default/files/HeraldSun_ScientiststrytorecordallorganismsintheSmokies.pdf Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine >.
↑ SHARKEY, MICHAEL J. . "THE ALL TAXA BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY OF GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK."Florida Entomologist. (2001): 556-564. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://journals.fcla.edu/flaent/article/view/75004/72662>.
↑ Mansfield, Duncan . "In the Smoky Mountains, the Census Never Ended; From Salamanders to Slime Molds, an Ambitious Accounting." Washington Post 27 Jan 2007, A14. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://dlia.org/sites/default/files/WashingtonPost_IntheSmokyMountains,CensusNeverEnded.pdf Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine >.

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[1] "About".

[2] Borenstein, Seth. "Counting Every Species In Smokies Is Planned." Chicago Tribune [Chicago] 18 Dec 1998, n. pag. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-12-18/news/9812180034_1_great-smokies-spiders-researchers>.

[3] "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-24. Retrieved 2012-06-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

[4] MANSFIELD, DUNCAN. "Researchers preparing to start massive Smokies inventory." Associated Press State & Local Wire. (1998): n. page. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://dlia.org/sites/default/files/AP_ResearcherspreparingtostartmassiveSmokiesinventory.pdf Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine >.

[5] "Scientists try to record all organisms in the Smokies."Herald Sun [Durham] 07 May 2001, n. pag. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://dlia.org/sites/default/files/HeraldSun_ScientiststrytorecordallorganismsintheSmokies.pdf Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine >.

[6] SHARKEY, MICHAEL J. . "THE ALL TAXA BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY OF GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK."Florida Entomologist. (2001): 556-564. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://journals.fcla.edu/flaent/article/view/75004/72662>.

[7] Mansfield, Duncan . "In the Smoky Mountains, the Census Never Ended; From Salamanders to Slime Molds, an Ambitious Accounting." Washington Post 27 Jan 2007, A14. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. <http://dlia.org/sites/default/files/WashingtonPost_IntheSmokyMountains,CensusNeverEnded.pdf Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine >.

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