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Thomas Kohley
GIS Analyst, Spatial Data and Visualization Center
Jeffrey Hamerlinck
Technical Coordinator, Spatial Data and Visualization Center
The goal of the NBII is to provide swift user access to biological databases and information, through the development of an electronic federation of biological data and information sources. Its success rests on a growing network of partners who share biological information. But how do you get the potential partners sold on the idea when they have to contribute valuable time to making their data accessible and documented? The Wyoming Bioinformation Node (WBN), a cooperative effort between the University of Wyoming's Spatial Data and Visualization Center and National Gap Analysis Program, has been been conducting informal NBII "outreach" using the Wyoming GAP data. WBN provides web-based tools, such as interactive mapping, to facilitate access to information. The information is provided by partners who are willing to share their data or to make portions of their data available for more exposure. By building on-line tools for displaying Wyoming Gap Analysis data, we've attracted interest from a growing number of groups who not only want to contribute their data but are also willing to format/document their data, in order to get it on-line and visible to a wider audience. Specific examples of tools that WBN has developed/participated in include the Wyoming Vertebrate Atlas, the Wyoming Plant Atlas, and the Wyoming Internet Map Server, demonstrations of which will shown in this presentation.
What is NBII, and what does it have to do with GAP?
The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is a broad cooperative effort, led by the USGS, to create an electronic "federation" of biological data and information sources. Its goal is to provide swift user access to biological databases, information products, directories, and guides maintained by government and non-government agencies and private organizations. Its success rests on a growing network of partners who share biological information. Large statewide/regional projects like GAP would not be possible without data sharing between organizations. Anyone currently involved in GAP can appreciate the vast amount of research, calling and phone-tagging involved in acquiring data sources and making them useable within the GAP context. The majority of the data needed for a GAP project isn't usually found in journal articles, but is located in the huge, unwieldy, and often undocumented mass of information broadly known as "grey literature": unpublished reports, agency databases, theses and dissertations, etc. This is the sort of information for which the NBII was created. Not only would this vision of NBII reduce data duplication, focus future data development in needed areas, and encourage partnerships between data-producers and users, but future generations of GAPPers will be able to more efficiently locate, assimilate and updatre a wide array of data, working almost entirely off the Web.
So, we'd all like to spare future GAP programs some of the headache that we went through or are currently going through. Can this be accomplished, and if so, how?
The metadata standards and clearinghouse protocols established by the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) federation have been developed toward the goal of improving access and exchange of biological information. However, there are several hurdles in implementing the NSDI/NBII concept, including:
The Wyoming Bioinformation Node was developed as a research project to tackle these issues. The goals of the WBN were to first of all make existing biological data, such as produced by GAP, readily accessible and documented and second of all to advertise and educate people about the data and its potential uses by creating some on-line applications using the data. Once people see the availability and use of a limited number of datasets, will they in turn be inspired to document their own data according to standards and make it available on an NBII data-node? In other words, if we build some basic infrastructure and a few sample tools, will they come?
The Wyoming Bioinformation Node was funded by a USGS-BRD state-partnerships grant, based on a partnership between National Gap Analysis and University of Wyoming's Spatial Data and Visualization Center, the current home of the Wyoming Gap Analysis project.
We took a three-pronged approach to making the GAP data for Wyoming available on the Web:
The first goal of the WBN was to get the Wyoming Gap Analysis data-sets (land cover, predicted vertebrate species distributions, and land stewardship) documented according to the FGDC and NBII metadata standards, and make it available on the WBN web site for download. along with the Wyoming Gap Analysis final report. One of the objectives in building a biological data node was to make the Gap data available for download, but also to include available datasets, both biological, non-biological, and non-geospatial datasets (databases, reports) that might be pertinent to natural resources management and conservation. To accomplish this task, we integrated the biological data node within a broader spatial data clearinghouse maintained by the University of Wyoming, containing base data (roads, hydrography, elevation) as well as other water- and geological-related data.
The land cover and land stewardship data-sets are fairly straightforward to use, even for non-GIS users only basically familiar with a desktop mapping package. But it quickly became apparent that the complexity of the vertebrate database, with 445 different species distributions represented in one enormous polygon file for the state of Wyoming was not readily useable, even with detailed documentation. Out of a desire to make the vertebrate information more accessible to users that don't have access to GIS or desktop mapping software, we came up with the idea of converting the information into a web-based Species Atlas. The Atlas uses snapshots of each individual species' distribution map, along with ecological and reference information, attached to a simple search engine by CGI scripts.
The Species Atlas contains static maps (snapshots), but the next step is to provide an actual application using the data, an on-line GIS. Initially, a simple internet map server was developed for geologic/mining interests in Wyoming as a sort of spatial library, allowing users to define an area of interest anywhere within the state and then retrieve a listing of all the publications and data available for the particular area they defined. The Wyoming Geologic Database uses ArcView Internet Map Server with a Java front-end to provide simple GIS capability to web users with no GIS experience, walking them through the basics of working with a "live" map: zooming, panning, adding layers of information, and querying. The overwhelming response from a very broad audience to this tool changed the focus of development from just geologic interests to other interests as well. Because the GAP data was readily available for Wyoming, it was the next theme to be added to the map server. Socioeconomic data is the next priority for addition, with the goal of turning the Wyoming Geologic Database into a general "Wyoming Information Database", a one-stop shop where everyone from geologists to county planners to new businesses and tourists can find out where to go for further information, and to discover useful information that they might not even have been looking for initially.
As a result of making the GAP data more accessible via these Web-based tools, the WBN was approached by other organizations wanting to make their data available on the Web. One of the conditions of serving data on the WBN is that is accompanied by fully compliant metadata, which the contributors agreed to create and to maintain in exchange for having their data served and "advertised" on the WBN.
The Rocky Mountain Herbarium provided a database for almost 2,000 vascular plant taxa and their locations in Wyoming collected over a 100 year period. WBN developed an on-line Plant Atlas, similar to the above-mentioned Species Atlas, to showcase this database.
The U.S.F.S. Fisheries Habitat Relationship office for the Rocky Mountain region is in the process of documenting and providing their extensive spatial database on the threatened species, the Colorado Cutthroat Trout, to the WBN.
The University of Wyoming's Dept. of Renewable Resources is providing spatial and ecological data on Wyoming grasshopper species and infestations. Other University departments have also contacted WBN for help in producing metadata in exchange for making data available and "advertised" on the Web.
The Wyoming Partners in Flight organization hasmade arrangements to have some of their information made available on our web-site and negotiations are currently under way to develop links with Wyoming's Natural Heritage Program.
Software/Hardware/Personnel Support:
Probably the most obvious difficulty that comes with this approach is the initial money to develop a data node, and even more difficult, the money to sustain it over time. A powerful computer is needed to serve an intensive on-line application like the internet map server, not to mention a fair amount of hard-drive space to accomodate a growing data-node. The WBN currently houses nearly 5 gigabytes of data for downloading. Personnel is also needed for creating/updating web pages and web applications, processing data and providing assistance with metadata. The two-year grant that started off the WBN will be ending in September, 1998. So what is the future of the WBN?
There is no easy answer to finding support for this endeavor, and our solution has been temporary at best. The University of Wyoming's Spatial Data and Visualization Center has similiar goals for documenting data and promoting data-sharing. This Center houses the broader data clearinghouse which is sort of an "umbrella" encompassing not only the Wyoming Bioinformation Node but several other "nodes", including the Snake River Corridor node and the Wyoming Geologic Database. Funding continues to be an issue for each individual component as well as for the encompassing Center. However, placing the WBN within a larger clearinghouse does allow for shared resources, which cuts down on the cost. The clearinghouse also provides information about water resources, geologic/mining interests, and is currently expanding into more socioeconomic data and applications, which provides also for a larger user-base than just those with interest in biological data. At the same time, integrating the biological data with these other types of information, as in the example of the internet map server, showcases the utility of biological information to many new users. Eventually it may come to the point where the Center would have to charge for Web services, hard drive space, or metadata services in order to maintain its cost of operations. Hopefully the WBN and its parent clearinghouse will reach the point where a large enough body of users perceive it is as a useful and needed tool that there will be continued support from the user end.
Proprietary and/or sensitive data:
It's a fact of life: not everybody wants to share their data. They've invested too much time and money in their data not to want some kind of compensation for it. Two big contributing sources to Wyoming Gap's vertebrate distributions were the Wyoming Natural Heritage Program's database and the Wyoming Game and Fish Dept.'s Wildlife Observation System, both of which are proprietary databases and also contain sensitive information such as nesting locations of endangered or threatened species which should not be advertised freely on the internet. While neither organization was willing to share their data, they were convinced of the utility of the Wyoming Bioinformation Node and willing to have their databases "advertised" on the WBN through metadata which contains a description of their data and contact information for how to go about obtaining it. Not only does the metadata educate other people about available data, but also educates the data providers about what other data providers are collecting, hopefully resulting in less data duplication and more focus on needed areas.
This also brings up the issue of a "distributed" versus a "centralized" clearinghouse. The advantages of a distributed system is that the clearinghouse points to individual organizations who are reponsible for providing their own data and keeping it up-to-date, whereas a centralized clearinghouse requires a concentration of hard drive space and a middle-man to coordinate data updates. However, a distributed system will be unwieldy and difficult to use without underlying standards to smooth out the process. In this situation, the WBN plays the role of a motivator, educating organizations about the FGDC metadata standard for geospatial data and the NBII standard for biological data in exchange for increasing our own "metadata database" and increasing Wyoming's knowledge in general about various sources of available data.