19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Interoperability

Managing Biodiversity and Ecological Data, Information and Knowledge

William K. Michener (wmichener@LTERnet.edu)
Associate Director and Senior Scientist, LTER Network Office, University of New Mexico, USA

The Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge (SEEK) is a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional and multi-national effort to address current challenges associated with data accessibility and integration in the biodiversity and ecological sciences.  The SEEK cyberinfrastructure encompasses three integrated systems: (1) EcoGrid-an open architecture for data access; (2) a Semantic Mediation System based on domain-specific ontologies; and (3) an Analysis and Modeling System that supports semantically integrated analytical workflows. SEEK design and development is also informed by three community-based Working Groups that address: (1) Biodiversity and Ecological Analysis and Modeling;(2) Knowledge Representation; and (3) Biological Classification and Nomenclature. A multifaceted education, outreach and training program ensures that the SEEK research products, software, and cyberinfrastructure optimally benefit the target communities. Significant products to date include: prototype development of the EcoGrid, Kepler (new software that supports creation of scientific workflows), and GROWL (a graphical web ontology language that enables visualization of ontologies).

SEEK effort is currently focused on prototyping workflows for the ecological niche modeling community. A new and promising paradigm in biodiversity informatics is the use of ecological niche modeling to extrapolate and anticipate implications of global climate change for biological diversity. Future scenarios based on general circulation models (GCMs) present diverse visions of global climate futures. The implications of these different futures for biodiversity are only now being explored.  While data suggest that climates are changing, the implications of these changes remain unclear and little explored. At this time there are no hemisphere-wide evaluations and no broad comparative analyses of implications of different GCM modeling centers or model scenarios. Part of the reason for the lack of research is the prohibitive time costs for large-scale analyses.  With the use of distributed resources and the building of analytic workflows for automated processing of climate change/biodiversity analyses the first application for the SEEK project will be the ecological niche modeling of mammals of Western Hemisphere to look at the implications of climate change on current and projected habit range.