Cloud based data makes searching museum collection data easier SD 28082011

Storing Vertebrates in the Cloud: Cloud-Based Data Make Searching the World’s Museum Collections Easier

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2011) — What Google is attempting for books, the University of California, Berkeley, plans to do for the world's vertebrate specimens: store them in "the cloud."

Online storage of information from vertebrate collections at the Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, National Museum of Natural History in Paris, UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) and from hundreds of other animal collections around the world -- or at least, all collections that include animals with backbones -- will make them readily available to academic researchers and citizen scientists alike.
Computing clouds are shared pools of servers that can be accessed from anywhere, anytime, and are far more reliable than computer servers at individual institutions.

The project to create VertNet (http://vertnet.org/), a cloud-based collection of vertebrate specimens, got off the ground this summer thanks to a three-year, $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The effort is led by UC Berkeley museum curators and involves colleagues from the University of Colorado, Boulder; University of Kansas in Lawrence; and Tulane University in New Orleans.

The information on a museum specimen can range from basic -- the species name and where and when it was collected -- to extensive field notes, photographs, audio recordings and information about tissue samples.
"After we put information on our specimen and tissue collections online, usage skyrocketed," Wieczorek said. "The number of specimen records delivered in response to queries went from the hundreds of thousands to tens of millions per year."

Once the collections data are in the cloud, an increasing number of online applications will allow manipulation and display of the data beyond the basic maps now possible.

"The power of VertNet lies in new ways of discovering and integrating data for biodiversity science," Bloom said.
Seaweed, lichens and bryophytes

VertNet's success should lead other museums, at UC Berkeley and elsewhere, to upload their data to the cloud.

"The cloud idea -- getting data out where it's accessible in a variety of ways -- is very attractive," said Richard L. Moe, an information technologist and seaweed expert at the University and Jepson Herbaria. "Its capacity for indexing is unparalleled."

For now, though, Moe is working on an NSF-funded project to merge the California plant collections from 17 state institutions into one online database, which has many of the capabilities of a cloud-based collection. UC Berkeley's herbaria have already digitized their 360,000 specimens of California vascular plants (ferns, flowering plants and gymnosperms). Moe is collaborating with institutions as diverse as Cal State Chico and the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, all members of the Consortium of California Herbaria, to help bring their specimens online.

These online collections were used a few years ago by UC Berkeley researchers to predict the impact of climate change on California's endemic land plants.
"The value of online specimens is not only to document existing and new species, but also to investigate the spread of invasive species and future changes to distributions of native species and communities," said Brent Mishler, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and director of the campus herbaria. "A similar dataset is needed to document changes in the marine flora."

Mishler garnered a grant from NSF to bring all of UC Berkeley's California seaweed collections, including images, online. The herbaria also is part of a nationwide digitization effort, funded by NSF's Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program, aimed at all museum lichen and bryophyte (mosses and their kin) collections.

The Essig Museum of Entomology is also digitizing its collections as part of the Calbug consortium of eight state institutions that have insect collections.

VertNet in cloud by 2012
By summer of next year, Bloom, Cicero and Wieczorek should have the current vertebrate collections "mobilized" to the cloud and have started to bring onboard some 75 institutions now on the waiting list, including museums in Ecuador and Africa.

GBIF data network helps map medicinal plants in Australia

Innovative use of data accessible through GBIF may help to identify areas of high cultural value, based on plants used in traditional medicine by Aboriginal people in Australia.

Full article:
http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/showsingle/article/gbif-data-network...

The Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) in collaboration with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other national and international partners developed an online information tool to support policy and decision making process on biodiversity. The informatics tool named TanBIF-GIS enable analysis and modelling of primary biodiversity data to support (biodiversity related) decision-making activities such as land use planning, design of protected areas, impacts of invasive species, weeds, pests and diseases on agricultural production and human health among others. The tool allows users to perform meaningful analysis by integrating and using biodiversity data (including occurrence data, species-level data/ecosystem data) in combination with other type of data (geospatial, climatic, demographic, economic datasets). At this juncture, COSTECH calls for interested experts to develop “Show cases” on the application of TanBIF-GIS Tool for Biodiversity Policy/Decision Making, Management, Research and Education in Tanzania.

Any idea on selecting the best Showcase?

Welcome to TanBIF Forum!