City-based NCL plays host to top American and Indian scientists to chart a map for creating electronic catalogue on biodiversity

Imagine: life on the planet, a complete history on the web!KARTYK VENKATRAMANDECEMBER 9

I MAGINE a future where aglobal warning system alertsfarmers on a possible inva-sion by crop-killing pests, an

ecosystem is saved before a super-highway is constructed, an area isidentified by forest officials as awildlife sanctuary before it's toolate.

And all this done by accessing acomprehensive, globally interoper-able online electronic catalogue onbiodiversity — one that lists hun-dreds of thousands of flora andfauna species, geographically withcomplete data on each and everyentry.

In a bid to convert this vi-sion into reality and bring ITto the taxonomist (biodiver-sity researcher) the NationalChemical Laboratory(NCL) played host to anIndo-US joint internationalworkshop on Biodiversity In-formatics. Attended by 45Indian and eight Americandelegates specialising in ITand biodiversity, as well asNCL scientists, the three-daymeet, which ended onThursday, looked at identify-ing various areas of collabo-ration.

John Mosesso, US Geo-logical Survey (biological resourcesdiscipline), is upfront when he says

it's a little too early to say a solutionhas been reached in collating the

huge volumes of taxo-nomical information."Our data would beuseful to experts inidentifying endangeredspecies and invasiveones.

"We are in theprocess of digitising in-formation on biodiver-sity in North Americaand in other parts of theworld. These three daysin Pune has seen a lot ofinformation and ideaexchange," Mosesso

told Pune Newsline.Though largely a scien-

tific endeavour, Mosesso said somecorporates were being involved in

Log on to www.ncbi.org.in for a catalogue on biodiversity

the US to create awareness.His co-US delegate Michael

Ruggiero, director, Integrated Tax-onomic Information System(ITIS), USGS-Smithsonian Insti-tution hit the nail on the head. "It'sbeen almost 200 years of namingspecies all over the world, but thedata wasn't digitised. The samespecies are identified by differentnames in various parts of the world.Our's is a standard checklist forNorth American biodiversity, pro-viding authoritative information."

In India, the NCL Centre forBiodiversity Informatics (NCBI)has since 2001 put together a com-prehensive websitewww.ncbi.org.in — where the sec-tion on Indian fauna alone contains

over 90,000 entries alongwith48,000 synonyms and 15,078 com-mon names. Apart from this are ex-haustive entries on flora, fungi,viruses, microbes, threatened andinvasive species.

Vishwas Chavan, scientist atNCL who is coordinating work atNCBI, says most of the data hasbeen sourced from the Kolkata-based Zoological Survey of India(ZSI), as also from printed re-search papers.

"There is a lot of information,but it's locked up in cupboards allover the country. The challenge isto open these cupboards. This web-site would make biodiversity re-searchers' job much easier," hesaid.