Internet Gateway for Delivering Biodiversity Data

ESRI User ConferenceJuly 2005

Field inventory & data recording

Data management and analysis

Conservation expertise and analysis

Information access and delivery

Decision support systems

Guiding Conservation

Action

Scientific standards and methods

Connecting Science with Conservation

NatureServe Information Products - Today

NatureServe Explorer• An online, searchable database of

conservation information on more than 50,000 North American species and ecological communities

InfoNatura• Extensive conservation information on the

birds, mammals, and amphibians of Latin America

Global Amphibian Assessment• An online, searchable database of the

world's 5,743 known species of amphibians Digital Range Maps

• For all birds and mammals of the Western Hemisphere, available as downloadable ArcView shapefiles

Ecological Systems• Of the U.S. and Latin America, available as

downloadable Access databases

Evolution of Information Delivery

Current Paper field surveys Manual data entry

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Future Handheld GPS/GIS unit Automated data capture

Client-server architecture ArcView 3.X technology Shapefile data storage

Service Oriented Architecture ArcGIS technology Geodatabase

Man

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Manual taxon. reconciliation Manual spatial data aggregation

Automated taxon. reconciliation Automated geodatabase update

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Manual custom data process Summarized location data on Web

Automated web data delivery Spatially-enabled website

Internet GatewayWhy?

• Improve the availability and use of biological and ecological information for informing conservation and land use decisions

• Improve interoperability with international biodiversity networks (e.g., GBIF, NBII)

• Improve the currency and quality of NatureServe data products

NBII GAP Portal

GBIF Data Portal

Published Services:

Internet Gatewayto What?

What is it? • Taxonomy & classification of species and natural

communities (Elements)

Where is it? • Mapped locations of species populations and natural

communities (Element Occurrences)

How is it doing?• Quality and condition of each element occurrence• Conservation status and trend of each element type

What is it?Botanical Taxa

• 24,497 Vascular Plants – 16,566 full species & 7,931 infraspecifics

native in U.S. and/or Canada

• 2,433 Bryophytes – 1,975 full species & 458 infraspecifics

• 4,012 Lichens – 3,882 full species & 130 infraspecifics

• Plus an additional ~10,000 non-native species

InvertebratesVertebrates

1,30012,0001,748~12,000 Total Taxa

0009,170 * Latin America

1,30012,0001,7482,840U.S. & Canada

Sub-species

SpeciesSub-species

Species

* Latin American Reptiles to be added in Calendar Years 05-06

Animal Taxa

L. Master

L. Master

Piotr Naskrecki

Terrestrial Ecological Systems

Group of plant associations that tend to co-occur within landscapes with similar ecological processes, substrates, and/or environmental gradients.

~800 in US & Canada; 1,700 in hemisphere

Good for broad-scale mapping

Where is it?

Boreal Toad, Bufo boreas boreas

An Element Occurrence (EO) is an area of land and/or water in which a species population or natural community is, or was present.

Identity Date Location

How is it doing?NatureServe Conservation Status Ranks

GX — Extinct

GH — Possibly extinct

G1 — Critically imperiled

G2 — Imperiled

G3 — Vulnerable

G4 — Apparently secure

G5 — Widespread, abundant and secure Eastern Prairie White-Fringed Orchid, G3 N3

L. M

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Wood Stork, G4 N3

N-rank and S-rank equivalents are used at National and Sub-national levels

Internet GatewayHow?

Build a menu of map and web services that:• Expose selected sets of data (defined by XML schemas)• Are directly accessible to other applications• Provide a custom user experience

Improve synchronization across Network nodes:• Separate record-level data updates from taxonomic reconciliation• On-demand data exchanges (change-driven, not time-driven)• More automated (XML, web-services-based process)

Share data, control who accesses it, and how they interact with it:• Local nodes set access control policies (not one size fits all)• Maximize level of access provided by each node

Architecture Applications Layer – NatureServe

Explorer, NatureServe Vista, and other custom applications submit XML-SOAP requests to web services.

Web-Application Services Layer – core functionality is implemented as web services and map services; security services provide authentication and authorization based on data provider policies; this layer interacts with the publishing database to retrieve information in response to user/application queries.

Database Layer – includes Biotics 4 source database, publishing geodatabase, and policy store.

Local DBsub-national element &EO data

Local DBsub-national element &EO data

Local DBsub-national element &EO data

Range-wide Element Data

Aggregated EO Data

NatureServe Explorer

Self-serve, online data exploration &

visualization

Custom Data Analysis & Delivery

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NatureServe Enterprise Databases

Current Data Delivery Framework

WebService

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Local DBsub-national element &EO data

Public WebsiteUser

Enterprise Geodatabase

range-wide element &

aggregated EO data

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Custom Application Interfaces

Local DBsub-national element &EO data

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Internet GatewayConceptual Approach

Access Control Approach

Problem• How to deliver the most precise level of spatial resolution to

meet clients’ needs while honoring data providers’ access policies?

Our Current Approach• Present one public-facing map service to the user• Develop multiple map services that present different levels

of spatial resolution to the same underlying dataset• Redirect users to the appropriate spatial resolution map

service based on their access rights

Example stakeholders that have a vested interest in the outcome of this project:• NatureServe Network data providers• Academic Researchers • Federal Agencies • State & Local Government• Other Conservation Organizations• Industry/Commercial Partners • Data Contributors• Public Website Users

NatureServe is continuing to document stakeholder needs to determine the products and services the system should support

Involving Stakeholders

Example Web Services

Submit species name and retrieve detailed species information, including legal and conservation status

Submit a boundary, and retrieve a yes/no response indicator for threatened and endangered species in that area

Submit a boundary and legal or conservation status, and retrieve a list of the species known to occur in that area

Example Map Services

Submit species name and display all known population occurrences for that species in North America

Submit a species name and a boundary, and display all known population occurrences for that species within the provided area

Select a USGS 7.5’ quad and display all known species occurrences that intersect the quad boundary

Putting it all together

Submit Query to

Map Service

XML Results

Formatted XML

Internet GatewayTimeline

Year 1: Data access workshop, November 2004 NatureServe Leadership

Conference Establish enterprise geodatabase and DiGIR registry Hold user story workshops to gather requirements for data content and data

access

Year 2: (getting underway now)• Development iterations begin for candidate releases

• Web application interface to geodatabase content• Web services• Data synchronization process and tools

Year 3:• Development iterations continue for production releases• Implement web services at two member program pilot sites• Rollout plan for network-wide implementation

Project Contacts:• Lori Scott lori_scott@natureserve.org• Douglas Sellers douglas_sellers@natureserve.org

For More Information:• www.natureserve.org• www.gbif.net

Get involved:• Review XML schema• Beta test web services

Resources

Financial support is provided by the National Science Foundation Biological Databases and Informatics

program (grant # 0345400) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Information Exchange Network Grant program,

through a cooperative agreement with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental

Control.

Acknowledgements