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A database that pools information on the earth's 1.5 million named animals, plants, and microorganisms will be accessible via the Internet later this year. This resource will be called the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The facility is the brainchild of the Working Group on Biological Informatics of the Megascience Forum, a body formed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Also involved in the project are the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation.
Currently, there are a number of separate information sources on biodiversity, including Costa Rica's Inbio, Mexico's Conabio and global initiatives like Species 2000 and the Tree of Life. However, these databases are not coordinated in any fashion, nor is there a common information architecture between them. GBIF hopes to remedy this situation.
The GBIF website will officially launch in March. The ultimate goal is to provide a web page for every animal, plant, or microbe on the planet. There will be links from these web pages to other on-line projects and databases. Databases operating under the GBIF mantle will remain the properties of the institutions that create them.
In tandem with the traditional Linnaen nomenclature, a new system will be created ...