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The new software tools that will facilitate decision-making in conservation using GBIF data will be made available by GBIF early in the second half of 2006. All the tools to be developed will be available via the GBIF tools download website when they are completed.
These GBIF-funded projects will develop tools that will benefit the conservation community, among others. The tools will include user-friendly mapping applications that utilise geospatial datasets. Geospatial datasets are those that have some reference to a place on the Earth's surface included in each data record (about 50% of GBIF data have such a reference). Georeferences in specimen data enable various kinds of analyses, including ecological niche modeling. This is because having a geographic reference point makes it possible to combine species-occurrence data with geographic information system (GIS) layers of information (e.g. on climate, terrain, etc.)
In one of the projects, called the GBIF Mapping and Analysis Portal Application (GBIF-MAPA), researchers from the Australian Museum, the University of Colorado (Boulder, Colorado, USA) and the New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation will collaborate to produce two GIS-based tools.
The first of these tools is a "gap-analysis" tool that can help make effective selections of locations for biodiversity survey efforts. This is needed because such surveys are expensive undertakings that require careful planning. It is important that data obtained in new surveys complement, rather than accidentally duplicate, existing data. This tool will use data available through GBIF, and thus help to reduce bias in overall understanding of the distribution of species.
The other is actually a tool set that will make possible the examination and comparison of results from different methods of estimation of species-richness. Species richness is an indicator that is used in the selection of conservation areas, but the different methods can often yield different results. Such examination and comparison will make decision-making more robust.
The audience for these tools includes existing GBIF users and new users who have a conservation planning and habitat conservation focus. Such a global mapping tool will support the missions of many agencies and international initiatives to slow the rate of biodiversity loss.
The tools will be specifically tailored to work with the GBIF data portal, and will be "web-services" based which means that the users of the tools will not have to have any special software on their own computers. Instead, they will be using computing capacity on remote computers, including those of GBIF and one or more of its Nodes.
One of the difficulties that is faced by analyses such as those to be undertaken by users of GBIF-MAPA tools, however, is that geospatial data sets are highly diverse. The geospatial coordinate system used in the collection of the data can differ (latitude/longitude in degrees or decimals, Township/Range, raster versus vector, etc.), as can the scale at which the data are recorded (e.g. from 1-meter plots to 10 degrees of latitude, from the canopy of a single tree to a satellite image of the Earth).
However, it would be immensely valuable to be able to combine these differing data sets. To do that, a stable global geospatial grid system is needed. Such a system has been invented - it is called PYXIS (see image).
The second GBIF demo project will develop user friendly tools to quicken and facilitate the visibility, usage and integration of biodiversity information of all types. The PYXIS grid system will be used as an infrastructure that supports these tools.
The proposal for this project came from IUCN-Canada, and is entitled "Enabling a Global Grid: Geospatial Data Sharing, Visualization and Analysis".
The tools to be developed will enable environmental organizations, researchers, policy makers and others in the field to access the numerous and rich biodiversity databases presently available (e.g. GBIF, conservation, satellite, and other data). These simple, yet powerful, tools will allow leveraging, in an intuitive way, the investments that have been made in the development of these datasets.
The pilots for these tools will be analysis of two areas of the Earth: the Arctic, and the montane cloud forests of Mexico, Costa Rica and Colombia. The georeferencing systems employed by the different countries involved in both areas have been highly divergent. The PYXIS "lens" that will be developed will allow for the first time the analysis of the Arctic as a whole, or the cloud forests as a whole.
These two projects were chosen for funding from among 12 very interesting proposals. These came in response to the Request for Proposals for GBIF Demonstration Projects that was issued on 20 September 2005. These came from institutions associated with 6 Participant countries and 2 international organizations (Australia, BGCI, Colombia, Germany, India, IUCN, Canada, Spain and USA). There will be an interim report on the funded projects at GB12 in South Africa (April 2006), and the final results are due (July 2006) in time for GB13 in Peru.
For more information contact Beatriz Torres
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