Progress and plans
GBIF Work Programme
- contributions for 2019: 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 2a, 2c, 3d, 5b, 5c
- plans for 2020: 1a, 1b, 1e, 1f, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3d
Mission
The US node to GBIF represents an integral part of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) activities to collect, organize and share biological information. As part of that role USGS has identified three primary functions:
- Assist the US biodiversity community with understanding biological data management and standards that promote data sharing, reuse, and reproducibility (FAIR).
- Promote biodiversity data mobilization in the US by educating the US community on the use of data standards and provide a pathway for data providers to make their data accessible via the US Node Integrated Publishing Toolkit.
- Encouraging the reuse of the available data to support biodiversity-related science, decision-making for sustainable development, species protections and conservation efforts, and risk analyses.
Funding
Since establishing the node in 2001, USGS has fully funded direct implementation of the US Node to GBIF as a key contribution to its broader biodiversity informatics activities.
The basic financial contribution to the GBIF Secretariat is made by the National Science Foundation, and facilitated by the Smithsonian Institution. In the past, funding was also provided by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
History
USGS has administered the US Node to GBIF since the US joined GBIF in 2001. The USGS-coordinated National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) served first as the primary implementation vehicle for the node. In 2010, the USGS Science Analytics and Synthesis Program assumed responsibility for the US node. The USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) project oversaw maintenance of the node until 2020 and included operation of the BISON Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) instance. The US Node is migrating to the shared GBIF infrastructure pilot, gbif.us as part of its intent to closer align and leverage the GBIF infrastructure to provide more timely and streamlined access to data. USGS also oversees two other IPT instances- the OBIS-USA IPT instance and the Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) IPT instance that will continue to serve data to GBIF.
Structure
While USGS operates the US node to GBIF, the GBIF-US community is broad, multifaceted, and distributed spanning Federal, state, and academia. For access to all the species occurrence data in the US please visit the GBIF-US portal.