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An Information System
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The All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) of the
Great Smoky Mountains
National Park is a cooperative project involving
National Park Service personnel, scientists from at least 37 universities,
and 17 private organizations. The scale of this endeavour far exceeds that
of any biological survey yet conducted. Its objectives are to collect,
organize and disseminate information on the distribution, abundance and
natural history of each of the 100,000 species estimated to inhabit the park.
Central to the success of the ATBI is the development and implementation of a comprehensive Information System that can effectively serve the processes of data collection, management, analysis and summarization, as well as the dissemination of the information to a wide range of end-users through the medium of the World Wide Web. The combination of size and diversity of the data set that will emerge from the ATBI and today's information technologies will make it possible for researchers to explore and visualize their data in innovative ways. Furthermore, a database accessible through the Internet creates the possibility of integration of information from other taxa and other scientific domains , e.g., climate, soils, land-use, hydrology, and vegetative cover, which may lead to new and exciting discoveries. We have been funded by the National Science Foundation to develop and implement a prototype system that leverages existing biodiversity information products developed at the OSUC. The primary data, consisting of specimens and observations of taxa, will be collected by ATBI participants using off-the-shelf database or spreadsheet software. For this first phase of the ATBI, these data will be downloaded, transformed, and input into a central relational database system. The database will provide access to the primary data for researchers and land managers. It will be designed to bring the data into compliance with Federal Geospatial Data Committee standards on biological data and be developed in conformance with the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) and National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). The immediate goals for the development of the Information System are: to build the database structure, and to create data exchange formats (from desktop database applications such as Biota and Specify). In subsequent phases of the ATBI, information of general interest will be generated and disseminated through the World Wide Web. The standard formats will be species pages (i.e., summaries of information for a single species), locality pages, and summarizations of overall survey activities.
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