Introduction to OBIS

Ward AppeltansIOC/UNESCO

iMarine-VLIZ-OBIS Meeting, 28 Augustus 2012 - Oostende

VISION

We make biogeographic data from all over the world freely available to policy makers, environmental managers, researchers and the public at large, in order to increase our knowledge to better manage and protect our oceans.

History in a nutshellMarine spp Datasets Records (M)

1997 1st COML workshop – OBIS concept

1999 Preparatory workshop Washington

2000 OBIS launched, funding Sloan and NSF

2001 1st Int. Comm. Meeting, M.J. Costello chair, 1 staff member (Ph. Zhang)

2002 1st OBIS node (OBIS-SEAMAP)

2004 40,000 38 5.6

2006 75,000 153 10.3

2007 E. Vanden Berghe director, 2-3 staff at Rutgers 79,000 206 13.1

2008 13 OBIS nodes 104,000 492 16.4

2009 OBIS part of UNESCO-IOC/IODE 108,000 725 22.1

2010 Launch new data portal 114,000 912 30.7

2011 Database servers hosted by VLIZ (Ostend) 118,000 1,056 32.3

2012 W. Appeltans manager at IODE (Ostend) 119,000 1,125 33.6

OBIS NetworkOBIS is a strategic alliance of hundreds of scientists and organisations who contribute data, information and expertise to OBIS.

Dots are projects

Questionaire by EuroMarine in 2012

Results: among 48 data systems (based on 360 reponses –18% response rate), OBIS is listed in the:

– Top 5 best-known data systems– Top 10 best searched and downloaded systems– Top 10 systems were people have contributed data to– Top 10 most consulted systems on a monthly basis

LINK to report

Funding resources for the OBIS Secretariat• Current:

– European Commission• iMarine EU FP7 project

– UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO-IOC)

• IOC Member States: Flanders, Brazil, Canada, USA, Australia

• Past:– Alfred P. Sloan Foundation– Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation– National Science Foundation (NSF)– European Commisson (EMODNET)– National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP)– National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Data System Architecture

assemblyassembly

nodenode nodenode nodenode

stagingstaging

productionproduction

portal

marboundmarbound

WOD/ODPWOD/ODP

GEBCOGEBCO

QueriesMappingExtraction

-Excel, DiGIR, IPT-OBIS (extended DwC) schema

WoRMSWoRMS

ITIS, CoL, IRMNGITIS, CoL, IRMNG

EOLEOL

GEOGEO

iMarineiMarine

LifeWatchLifeWatch

GBIFGBIF

GCMDGCMD

Association of observation points with oceanography

Observation data associated with Bottom depth Temperature Salinity Nitrogen / Oxygen Phosphate / Silicate

Visualized through interactive graphs Time-series graphs Histograms

Observation data associated with Bottom depth Temperature Salinity Nitrogen / Oxygen Phosphate / Silicate

Visualized through interactive graphs Time-series graphs Histograms

Environmental attributes from World Ocean Atlas

WOA09, http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOA09/pr_woa09.html

Example map #1Cetacean species observations in LME region ‘Celtic-Biscay Shelf’(no environmental conditions set)

Example map #2Cetacean species observations in LME region ‘Celtic-Biscay Shelf’ filtered by a temperature range of 13 to 15 degrees

OBIS allows extraction of observations based on environmental conditions

Summary stats: very little historical data

Summary stats: number of records and species per year

Summary stats: growth of data in OBIS

#spp *100#datasets # distribution records

Summary stats: it is becoming more difficult to add more species to OBIS

Summary stats: it is becoming more difficult to add more species to OBIS (1950-2005)

species

records

Number of species observed in OBIS and described as new in WoRMS

The Unknown Ocean: A sliceRed = many records, dark blue none

The vast midwaters,Earth’s largesthabitat by volume,mostly unexplored(~95%)

Source: CoML OBISWebb, O’Dor, Vanden Berghe

Coastal areas > open waters; Surface areas > the deep sea; Vertebrates and other large animals > smaller invertebrates; Northern hemisphere > southern.

OBIS assists in identifying global patterns in the distribution of biodiversity

(a) Total records in OBIS, corrected for the difference in surface area between squares on different latitude; (b) total number of species, corrected for surface area; (c) Shannon Index; (d) Hurlbert’s index, es(50)

An altered ocean: changes in composition and abundance (90% declines in some groups)

2007

1950s

1980s

McClenachen (2009) Cons. Biol.

CBD-COP10 listed OBIS as a key source of information for the identification of Ecologically or Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) part of CBD

Areas of high biodiversity

Areas of special importance for the life history of a

species

Areas of significant naturalness

Areas of uniqueness or rarity

OBIS feeds models of species distributions and species richness

‘Aquamaps’ uses environmental envelope modelling to extrapolate species distributions beyond the actual observations (www.aquamaps.org)

Many research papers are based on OBIS data

Social media

IMarine• iMarine is a new EU project to establish a global e-

infrastructure to share data & knowledge for sustainable fisheries management and conservation policies. In iMarine, IOC/OBIS coordinates the biodiversity cluster and is involved in the creation of a Community of Practice.

http://www.i-marine.eu

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OBIS’ role in iMarine

Efforts:

•WP3 (18 person months)

– setting up an Ecosystem Approach Community of Practice (EA-CoP) through:

• iMarine Board meetings, data and metadata harmonisation and standardisation

• Business Cases/Clusters (e.g. Biodiversity)

•WP6 (6 person months)

– Virtual Research Environments Deployment and Operation

Occurrence Data from GBIF

Occurrence Data from OBIS

Occurrence Data from WoRMS

∩Intersection

-Difference

ᴜUnion

A Data Set centric view will be adopted

Set Operations – Algebraic Operations

Advantage for OBIS

• Data analysis:– Scientists (or group of scientists) can set up a Virtual

Research Environment– Access to many data sources, statistical and geospatial

tools

• Policy level:– Supporting establishment of VMEs and EBSAs

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Advantage for OBIS

• Data quality and enrichment– QC tools– Identify outliers– Gap analysis– Taxon name reconciliation– Environmental envelopes

• Export tools, OGC-webservices• Man- and computing power

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