Abstract Detail

Building a High-Resolution, Specimen-Based Picture of Life: Possibilities and Challenges

Guala, Gerald [1], Simpson, Annie [2], Masaki, Derek [3].

Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON): The national unified resource for discovery, linkage and re-use of organismal occurrence data.

In an effort to improve on our current capacity to aggregate, normalize and visualize the massive accumulation of species occurrence data, the newly-formed Core Science Analytics & Synthesis Program of the US Geological Survey (USGS) is developing the Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) project, as an integrated and permanent resource for biological occurrence data from the United States. BISON leverages USGS assets such as the full mirror and US Node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the USGS National Map, and the accumulated human and infrastructure resources of the Survey's long-term investment in research and data management and delivery in biological and geospatial data. The BISON prototype currently contains more than 80 million occurrence records of species found in the United States and integrates dozens of environmental layers for visualization and spatial analysis purposes, including the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) soils database and NASA imagery. For example, users can define a geospatial polygon and retrieve all occurrences of species within it and then see how they relate to numerous environmental variables. Additional species occurrence data sources are being recruited, with emphasis on a) federal data sources and b) an invasive species theme. BISON's service layer is under development through a partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and resides on their massive computing infrastructure which includes the Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) and the Cray Jaguar Petascale supercomputer, the third fastest on earth, and currently being upgraded to "Titan" which should regain the top spot. The BISON project being build on this powerful infrastructure enables broad access to standardized biological data and serves as a resource for enabling ecological data discovery, analysis, and synthesis.

Broader Impacts:

1 - U.S. Geological Survey, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, MS 302, Reston, VA, 20192, USA
2 - U.S. Geological Survey, Core Science Systems, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, MS 302, Reston, VA, 20192, USA
3 - U.S. Geological Survey, Core Science Systems, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston, VA, 20192, USA

Keywords:
biodiversity informatics
repository
biological occurrence data
invasives.

Presentation Type: Symposium or Colloquium Presentation
Session: SY11
Location: Franklin A/Hyatt
Date: Wednesday, July 11th, 2012
Time: 4:00 PM
Number: SY11010
Abstract ID:442