The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is being terminated as of Jan. 15, 2012, due to a $3.8 million budget cut. As a result, all resources, databases, tools, and applications within the website terminated and no longer available. The site’s blog has already been terminated as of last week, and will be removed completely as of Nov. 1.
The NBII fostered a broad, collaborative program to provide increased access to data and information on the nation’s biological resources. The effort was effective in linking diverse, high-quality biological databases, information products, and analytical tools from partner institutions and contributors in government agencies, academic institutions, non-government organizations, and private industry.
The effort fostered many standards to facilitate online sharing of data and services, including:
- FGDC Biological Data Profile standard for describing biological data
- Geospatial Interoperability Framework based on ISO standards and OGC specifications.
- Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) for finding the scientific names of species by their popular names or vice-versa.
A number of data portals and tools of a geospatial nature were also compiled here, including:
- Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Data Access Wizard – tool to facilitate discovery and access to fisheries-related data sets
- Gap Analysis Program (GAP) – searchable statewide collection of digital species distribution maps and predictable habitat affinity models
- Early Detection, Rapid Assessment, and Rapid Response (EDRR) to Invasive Species – a living catalog of resources for invasive species management
- USGS Vegetation Characterization Program Products – Web-enabled information, data, and maps of the vegetation of 280 national Park units across the United States
There has been some indication that some of these resources will be hosted by the Data Observation Network of Earth (DataONE) cyberinfrastructure that serves to meet the needs of science and society with easily discovered Earth observation data, which is made possible through funding from the National Science Foundation.
For more information regarding this transition, refer to the NBII Program Termination page.
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Thanks for the story Matt. We, PSU, ran the data and mapping components for NBII Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Node, the Mid Atlantic Information Node, and the Bird Node. We have moved all of the data that we hosted for those nodes to the Penn State datacommons so that at least the data would be preserved at http://www.datacommons.psu.edu
Maurie, thanks for the update with this link to the data. It’s certainly a sad legacy of our digital age that pulling the site destroys links and access.
Thanks for the post Matt. FYI, the reference to the Gap Analysis Program (GAP) is limited to our first state projects through GAPServe. GAPServe won’t be available but the archived data are available from GAP’s National Operations Office at the University of Idaho. GAP is administered out of USGS Core Science Systems, Biological Informatics Program. Information about GAP and our national data products (landcover, protected areas, species distribution models) are available at: gapanalysis.usgs.gov.
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