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: phoebe@imcs.rutgers.edu

Sponsors and Members

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation