Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Last updated
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
GBIF-2015-full-stacked.png
Type of site
Biodiversity, natural history
Area servedWorldwide
URL www.gbif.org
CommercialNo
Launched2001;23 years ago (2001)
Current statusActive
GBIF's 'Participants' are nations and organizations that collaborate to advance free and open access to biodiversity data. Map: Participant nations as of 15 June 2020
. Gbif network 15junio2020.jpg
GBIF's 'Participants' are nations and organizations that collaborate to advance free and open access to biodiversity data. Map: Participant nations as of 15 June 2020.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. [1] The data are provided by many institutions from around the world; GBIF's information architecture makes these data accessible and searchable through a single portal. Data available through the GBIF portal are primarily distribution data on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes for the world, and scientific names data.

Contents

The mission of the GBIF is to facilitate free and open access to biodiversity data worldwide to underpin sustainable development. [1] Priorities, with an emphasis on promoting participation and working through partners, include mobilising biodiversity data, developing protocols and standards to ensure scientific integrity and interoperability, building an informatics architecture to allow the interlinking of diverse data types from disparate sources, promoting capacity building and catalysing development of analytical tools for improved decision-making. [1] [2]

GBIF strives to form informatics linkages among digital data resources from across the spectrum of biological organisation, from genes to ecosystems, and to connect these to issues important to science, society and sustainability by using georeferencing and GIS tools. It works in partnership with other international organisations such as the Catalogue of Life partnership, Biodiversity Information Standards, the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL), the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), and GEOSS. The biodiversity data available through the GBIF has increased by more than 1,150% in the past decade, partially due to the participation of citizen scientists. [3] [4]

From 2002 to 2014, GBIF awarded a prestigious annual global award in the area of biodiversity informatics, the Ebbe Nielsen Prize, valued at €30,000. As of 2018, the GBIF Secretariat presents two annual prizes: the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge and the Young Researchers Award. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carnegie Mellon University</span> Private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The institution was originally established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, it became the current-day Carnegie Mellon University through its merger with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, founded in 1913 by Andrew Mellon and Richard B. Mellon and formerly a part of the University of Pittsburgh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation</span> International organization

The International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC) (French: Conseil International de la Chasse et de la Conservation du Gibier, German: Internationaler Rat zur Erhaltung des Wildes und der Jagd) is a politically independent not-for-profit international organisation, aiming to preserve wildlife through the promotion of sustainable use of wildlife resources. The initialism "CIC" comes from the organisation's original French name Conseil International de la Chasse.

Ebbe Schmidt Nielsen was a Danish entomologist influential in systematics and Lepidoptera research, and an early proponent of biodiversity informatics. The journal Invertebrate Systematics was established with significant contributions from Nielsen, and he assisted in the founding of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Nielsen wrote several books, published over eighty scientific papers, and was highly regarded within the scientific community. Following his death, the GBIF organised the Ebbe Nielsen Prize in his memory, awarded annually to promising researchers in the field of biodiversity informatics. The moth Pollanisus nielseni is named after Nielsen.

Biodiversity informatics is the application of informatics techniques to biodiversity information, such as taxonomy, biogeography or ecology. It is defined as the application of Information technology technologies to management, algorithmic exploration, analysis and interpretation of primary data regarding life, particularly at the species level organization. Modern computer techniques can yield new ways to view and analyze existing information, as well as predict future situations. Biodiversity informatics is a term that was only coined around 1992 but with rapidly increasing data sets has become useful in numerous studies and applications, such as the construction of taxonomic databases or geographic information systems. Biodiversity informatics contrasts with "bioinformatics", which is often used synonymously with the computerized handling of data in the specialized area of molecular biology.

C-squares is a system of spatially unique, location-based identifiers (geocodes) for areas on the surface of the earth, represented as cells from a latitude- and longitude-based Discrete Global Grid at a hierarchical set of resolution steps, obtained by progressively subdividing 10×10 degree World Meteorological Organization squares; the term "c-square" is also available for use to designate any component cell of the grid. Individual cell identifiers incorporate literal values of latitude and longitude in an interleaved notation, together with additional digits that support intermediate grid resolutions of 5, 0.5, 0.05 degrees, etc.

The Catalogue of Life is an online database that provides an index of known species of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. It was created in 2001 as a partnership between the global Species 2000 and the American Integrated Taxonomic Information System. The Catalogue is used by research scientists, citizen scientists, educators, and policy makers. The Catalogue is also used by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Barcode of Life Data System, Encyclopedia of Life, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The Catalogue currently compiles data from 165 peer-reviewed taxonomic databases that are maintained by specialist institutions around the world. As of September 2022, the COL Checklist lists 2,067,951 of the world's 2.2m extant species known to taxonomists on the planet at present time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biodiversity Heritage Library</span> Discipline-oriented digital libraries

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to address this challenge by digitizing the natural history literature held in their collections and making it freely available for open access as part of a global "biodiversity community". The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, publishers, bioinformaticians, and information technology professionals to develop tools and services to facilitate greater access, interoperability, and reuse of content and data. BHL provides a range of services, data exports, and APIs to allow users to download content, harvest source data files, and reuse materials for research purposes. Through taxonomic intelligence tools developed by Global Names Architecture, BHL indexes the taxonomic names throughout the collection, allowing researchers to locate publications about specific taxa. In partnership with the Internet Archive and through local digitization efforts, BHL's portal provides free access to hundreds of thousands of volumes, comprising over 59 million pages, from the 15th-21st centuries.

A taxonomic database is a database created to hold information on biological taxa – for example groups of organisms organized by species name or other taxonomic identifier – for efficient data management and information retrieval. Taxonomic databases are routinely used for the automated construction of biological checklists such as floras and faunas, both for print publication and online; to underpin the operation of web-based species information systems; as a part of biological collection management ; as well as providing, in some cases, the taxon management component of broader science or biology information systems. They are also a fundamental contribution to the discipline of biodiversity informatics.

Plazi is a Swiss-based international non-profit association supporting and promoting the development of persistent and openly accessible digital bio-taxonomic literature. Plazi is cofounder of the Biodiversity Literature Repository and is maintaining this digital taxonomic literature repository at Zenodo to provide access to FAIR data converted from taxonomic publications using the TreatmentBank service, enhances submitted taxonomic treatments by creating a version in the XML format Taxpub, and educates about the importance of maintaining open access to scientific discourse and data. It is a contributor to the evolving e-taxonomy in the field of Biodiversity Informatics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Database on Protected Areas</span>

The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is the largest assembly of data on the world's terrestrial and marine protected areas, containing more than 260,000 protected areas as of August 2020, with records covering 245 countries and territories throughout the world. The WDPA is a joint venture between the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre and the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Commission on Protected Areas.

Forest informatics is the combined science of forestry and informatics, with a special emphasis on collection, management, and processing of data, information and knowledge, and the incorporation of informatic concepts and theories specific to enrich forest management and forest science; it has a similar relationship to library science and information science.

The Ebbe Nielsen Prize was an international science award made annually between 2002 and 2014 by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), to recognize a researcher who had made substantial contributions to the field of biodiversity informatics. The prize was established in memory of prominent entomologist and biodiversity informatics proponent Ebbe Nielsen, who died of a heart attack in the U.S.A. en route to the 2001 GBIF Governing Board meeting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Pyle</span> American ichthyologist and scuba diver

Richard Lawrence Pyle is a scuba diver and ichthyologist working on Hawaii.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linet Kwamboka</span> Kenyan computer scientist and businesswoman

Linet Kwamboka, is a Kenyan computer scientist and businesswoman, who is the founder and chief executive officer of DataScience Limited, an IT research company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera</span> Taxonomic database

The Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera (IRMNG) is a taxonomic database which attempts to cover published genus names for all domains of life, from 1758 in zoology up to the present, arranged in a single, internally consistent taxonomic hierarchy, for the benefit of Biodiversity Informatics initiatives plus general users of biodiversity (taxonomic) information. In addition to containing just over 500,000 published genus name instances as at May 2023, the database holds over 1.7 million species names, although this component of the data is not maintained in as current or complete state as the genus-level holdings. IRMNG can be queried online for access to the latest version of the dataset and is also made available as periodic snapshots or data dumps for import/upload into other systems as desired. The database was commenced in 2006 at the then CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia and, since 2016, has been hosted at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Belgium.

The Ebbe Nielsen Challenge is an international science competition conducted annually from 2015 onwards by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), with a set of cash prizes that recognize researcher(s)' submissions in creating software or approaches that successfully address a GBIF-issued challenge in the field of biodiversity informatics. It succeeds the Ebbe Nielsen Prize, which was awarded annually by GBIF between 2002 and 2014. The name of the challenge honours the memory of prominent entomologist and biodiversity informatics proponent Ebbe Nielsen, who died of a heart attack in the U.S.A. en route to the 2001 GBIF Governing Board meeting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Rees (scientist)</span>

Anthony J. J. ("Tony") Rees is a British-born software developer, data manager and biologist resident in Australia since 1986, and previously a data manager with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. He is responsible for developing a number of software systems currently used in science data management, including c-squares, Taxamatch, and IRMNG, the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera. He has also been closely involved with the development of other biodiversity informatics initiatives including the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), AquaMaps, and the iPlant Taxonomic Name Resolution Service (TNRS).

Vince Smith is a British entomologist and biodiversity informatician at the Natural History Museum, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandre Antonelli</span> Brazilian scientist

Alexandre Antonelli is Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, Professor of Biodiversity and Systematic at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. He is a biodiversity scientist working to understand the evolution and distribution of the diversity of life on Earth and how best to protect and sustainably use it. His first popular science book, The Hidden Universe: Adventures in Biodiversity, was published in July 2022.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "What is GBIF?". gbif.org.
  2. O'Brien, Colleen (31 July 2017). "Open-source species location data supports global biodiversity analyses". Mongabay Environmental News.
  3. Heberling, J. Mason; Miller, Joseph T.; Noesgaard, Daniel; Weingart, Scott B.; Schigel, Dmitry (9 February 2021). "Data integration enables global biodiversity synthesis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 118 (6): e2018093118. Bibcode:2021PNAS..11820180M. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2018093118 . PMC   8017944 . PMID   33526679.
  4. "Big Data Accelerates Biodiversity Research – News – Carnegie Mellon University". cmu.edu. Carnegie Mellon University. March 26, 2021.
  5. "Ebbe Nielsen Challenge". gbif.org. Retrieved 2022-01-12.