III: Workshop: Broadening Collaboration and Mobilizing Resources in the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Informatics Communities

Natureserve, Arlington VA

Investigators

Abstract

In July 2011, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) issued an influential report on sustaining environmental capital (PCAST 2011) recommending a series of actions, including the development of an Ecoinformatics-based Open Resources and Machine Accessibility (EcoINFORMA) initiative. The Federal response has been to design and implement the first phase of a major effort to mobilize and integrate Federal data (see: ecosystems.data.gov). Currently released products include a universal geospatial viewer and an integrated metadata resource, as well as three thematic hubs. These are Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (bison.usgs.ornl.gov) for biodiversity, EnviroAtlas (enviroatlas.epa.gov) for ecosystem services, and the Multi-resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (www.mrlc.gov) for landcover dynamics. In their report, the PCAST stated: "EcoINFORMA should interact with international biodiversity and ecosystem information systems in the development of globally accepted biodiversity and ecosystem information standards, and should seek out and encourage partnerships with the private and academic sectors to develop innovative tools for data integration, analysis, visualization, and decision-making." Recent mobilization of very large data sets in the Federal system as a part of EcoINFORMA has produced unprecedented opportunities for academic and commercial innovation, and the time is ripe for members of the Federal, academic, and commercial sectors to come together and examine the possibilities. A workshop and follow-up activities to bring together Federal environmental data providers and consumers with non-Federal environmental data providers and consumers to foster synergistic projects aimed at sustaining the country?s environmental capital and advancing science as a whole will take place in Washington, DC, in September 2015. The team will convene a broad representation of federal and nonfederal members of the biodiversity informatics and ecoinformatics communities, including academics and NGOs from a diverse group of organizations. The workshop will lead to much broader understanding and utilization of the existing EcoInforma hubs, as well as important feedback to the curators of those hubs about user community needs and interests.