Building Biodiversity Information Infrastructure:

Anticipating Avian Influenza Spread Patterns

A. Townsend PetersonUniversity of Kansas

H5N1 Spread

What Do We Know?

Characterize Migratory Bird Movements: Massive Data Assembly• Bird Occurrence Data – Summer and Winter– Breeding Bird Survey - ~15M records– Christmas Bird Count - ~20M records– Bird Banding Laboratory Data - ~65M records• ~13M recoveries, much less that connect seasons

• Environmental Data – support interpolation of species’ ranges– Climate data, topography/landform data, surface

reflectance (NDVI) data

Data Available

Fill the Gap: Mexico• “Mexico Atlas”– 350,000 specimens, 68 natural history museums– 16 years of work– 202,000 records now georeferenced

Integrating Museums

Key Seasonal Distribution Info

Forecasting AI Spread in America

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

Birds from westernmost Alaska migrate almost exclusively to California

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

But just a relatively small distance inland, Alaskan birds migrate both to California and broadly into the Interior

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

Window 3

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

Window 4

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

Window 6 … note decreasing importance of migration to California …

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

Window 7 … now essentially exclusively Interior …

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

Window 8 – note East Coast begins to receive migrants

7 Arctic Waterfowl Species

Window 10 – note exclusively East Coast now

Lessons Learned• Vast amounts of biodiversity information exist• But not always in useful formats• Biodiversity challenges such as AI demand

prompt and efficient responses• Need to build biodiversity data infrastructure:– Digitize biodiversity data– Integrate biodiversity data among institutions • ORNIS, MaNIS, FishNet, HerpNet, … DiGIR, TAPIR

– Enable biodiversity data via georeferencing– Quality control and error detection

Thank You!town@ku.edu