Integrating heterogeneous databases in the
Ocean Biogeographic Information System
Phoebe Y. Zhang J.F. Grassle
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) www.iobis.org
• OBIS is the information component of the Census of Marine Life, an international research program assessing and explaining the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine organisms throughout the world's oceans
• OBIS is an international science program to develop an on-line, open-access, globally-distributed network of systematic, ecological, and environmental information systems
”What lives where in the oceans and why”
OBIS History
• 1997:Some of the initial ideas for OBIS were developed at a CoML meeting
• 1998:Sloan funded Rutgers to develop a web-site to demonstrate the initial concept
• 1999: The first OBIS international workshop, DC
• 2000: NOPP funded eight projects to initiate OBIS
• 2001: NSF funded Rutgers to build a global portal for OBIS, OBIS becomes a GBIF Partner
• 2002:NOPP funded and other OBIS projects are interoperable through OBIS portal
OBIS International Committee• Mark J. Costello, Chair, Canada • Neil Ashcroft, United Kingdom• Geoff Boxshall, United Kingdom• Daphne G. Fautin, USA • Kim Finney, Australia • Rainer Froese, Germany • Dennis P. Gordon, New Zealand • J. Frederick Grassle, USA • Yoshihisa Shirayama, Japan
OBIS Secretariat
OBIS Members
• Bats Zooplankton (Deborah Steinberg)
• Biogeoinformatics of Hexacorals (Daphne Fautin, Bob Buddemeier)
• Cephbase (Phillip Lee, James Wood )
• FishBase (William Eschmeyer, Rainer Froese)
• Fishnet (Edward Wiley )
• GMBIS (Dale Kiefer)
• Indo-Pacific Mollusc Database (Gary Rosenberg)
• National Ocean Data Center (Roz Cohen)
• Seamount Online (Karen Stocks)
• ZooGene (Ann Bucklin,Bruce W. Frost, Peter H. Wiebe, Michael J. Fogarty)
www.iobis.org
OBIS Portal services
Biogeographic Data servicesearch over 430,000 species-based, geo-referenced records
Name servicecommon name-scientific name, synonym translation
Mapping serviceoverlaying with environmental basemaps
Biodiversity modeling service
www.iobis.org
OBIS Architecture
OBIS Portal services
Biogeographic Data service
Name service
Mapping service
Biodiversity modeling service
What’s New:NODC World Plankton DatabaseFAO Data through FishBase
Plans for the near future
• Genetic Information service (under development)Genetic Information service (under development)
• Expand returned data types on biogeographic data
• Integrate HMAP, Gulf of Maine, Southampton open sea data, and other mature data systems
• Incorporate more mapping, analysis, and modeling tools into the portal and provide network-wide automatic service
– Provide more key environmental data sets, provide viewing tools – Envirodata and EASy Netviewer
Become an OBIS Member
• provide data service to OBIS users through dynamic, distributed query
• provide data service to OBIS users by sending a copy of the data to OBIS for dynamic serving
• provide other services that can benefit the whole OBIS community
Contact Phoebe Zhang: [email protected]
Sponsors and Members
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation