SCAR-MarBIN and ANTABIF

Free and Open Access to Antarctic Biodiversity data

www.biodiversity.aqwww.scarmarbin.be

The background you need

Antarctic Environment

• Highest, driest windiest continent

• Fastest rates of change on the planet

• Heat sink in planet’s climate system

• High seasonality of light

• Marine: stable physico-chemical parameters

• Marine: low and constant temperature

• Marine: high productivity from phytoplancton

Antarctic (marine) Biodiversity

• Highly adapted to extreme (stable) environment

• High level of endemism

• Marine biomass and biodiversity second to tropical coral reefs

• Under-studied (especially the deep sea)

• Vulnerable to shifts!

• To understand these processes we need data

Antarctic Treaty

« In order to promote international cooperation in scientific investigation in Antarctica, as provided for in

Article III (1c) of the Treaty, the Contracting Parties agree that, to the greatest extent feasible and practicable: […]

Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available. »

(our inspiration)

“Exchanging” biodiversity data

• science-based, adaptative conservation and management

• testing fundamental theories

• consolidation of the community

• establish a benchmark for undisputed evidence of change/shifts

Data availability

• what? where? when?

• widely disseminated, patchy, hardly accessible

• (expensive) data and expertise are vanishing (fast!)

Information Networks

SCAR-MarBIN & ANTABIF

• www.scarmarbin.be: marine biodiversity information network

• www.biodiversity.aq: biodiversity information facility

• Main funding: Belgian science Policy office

• International Polar Year 2007/08

• Census of Antarctic Marine Life

• Ocean Biogeographic Information System

• Global Biodiversity Information Network

• Build an electronic ecosystem

• Offer free and open access to data and technology

• Expose all the (biodiversity) data and metadata, in multiple contexts

• Remain community-driven, and collaborative

• Adopt strong standardization

• Work for science, conservation, management

General philosophy

Who’s in?

Who *wants* to be in?

Tangible results

[results]: webportal (s)

taxonomy, biogeography

vizualisation

open access

850,000 visitors

6,950,000 hits

35,000,000 dld records

V2 coming up

ANTABIF coming up

[results]: taxonomic data

all taxa

all species

valid species

0 3,750 7,500 11,250 15,000

• The first RAMS

• Board of 60+ editors

• Feeds WoRMS, CoL and EoL

• 17,098 taxa (RAMS)

• Building a dynamic RAS

• 24,248 taxa (RAS)

[results]: geospatial data

1,275,799 records190 datasets

106 geodatasets5,235 taxa

Feeds OBIS, GBIFDownloadable

WebGISWebservices

ANTABIF technological ecosystems:Language: Ruby

Design patterns: MVC-ORMFramework: Rails(ActiveRecord) and YUI

Search engine: Full text (Elasticsearch-Lucene)Database: PostGresql GIS server: Geoserver

Spatial database: PostGISMapping client: OpenLayers

Web services: RESTish (all resources)Protocoles: DIF, dwcore, dwc archive, Tapir…etc

GBIF tools : HIT,IPTOS: FreeBSD

Hosting: BBPF (ULB/VUB joint IT Center)Metadata systems: GCMD (mirrored)N

uts

and

bolts

100% Open Source solutions

Projects

Antarctic Field Guidesafg.biodiversity.aqafg.scarmarbin.be

• Identification aid

• Best available pictures

• Descriptions

• Dynamically built from various sources

Antarctic Field Guides

More Ideas... coming up

Georeferenced genetic data: CAML barcoding

Polar Macroscope working group: BiPolar analyses

Southern Ocean Biogeography Atlas: interactive Atlas

Getting the microbes in...

is this Science?

see the literature...

A vision I’d like to share

Data are discoverable, open, linked, useful, and safe

Mark Parsons, PIC

Discoverable

Data should be accessible soon after collection (online wherever possible) in a discovery portal such as the Global Change Master Directory.

The importance of METADATA

Open

Open Data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data are freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.—Wikipedia

Anything else than Open slows down processes.

Linked

The term Linked Data is used to describe a method of exposing, sharing, and connecting data [using] the Web.—Wikipedia

Web2.0 philosophy.

UsefulData from different projects, disciplines, and data centers should be easily understood and used in

conjunction with each other in standard tools and analysis frameworks

Data should be well described so to be useful for a broad audience.

Interoperable

Metadata and data should be readily interchangeable between different polar data systems to enable data discovery across multiple portals.

So we stop reinventing the wheel all the time...

SafeSafe from hackers, from obsolescence, from undocumented change, from loss, and from the ravages of time.

That’s quite a challenge!

www.biodiversity.aq

www.slideshare.net/scarmarbin

www.scarmarbin.be

bruno.danis@scarmarbin.be

Thanks for your attention!