Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Advancing Map of Life's Impact and Capacity for Sharing, Integrating, and Using Global Spatial Biodiversity Knowledge

耶鲁大学、科罗拉多大学博尔德分校和康奈尔大学获得了一项奖励，以推进现有生命地图平台原型的内容提供和开发。关于物种地理分布的知识是许多生态学、进化和保护的核心，具有巨大的社会重要性。虽然存在数字物种分布产品，但它们仍然不完整，无法满足关键的社会需求。“生命地图”平台的开发就是为了解决这一需求。该项目的一个关键目标是使用新颖的方法来调动和整合不同类型的数据，从而使它们的集体优势克服个别弱点。具体而言，该项目将在一个网站上结合来自许多不同来源的各种分布数据类型，整合这些数据的范围产品，演绎和归纳建模预测，以及关于物种空间和环境知识库的报告。完成后，从已发表数据的研究人员到公民科学家的广泛用户将能够上传数据，编辑输入或输出，并直接改进或评论地图，迭代地改进物种分布知识。用户将能够直接查询或下载任何可再分发的内容。因此，《生命地图》将极大地促进对科学中物种空间背景的严格核算，并可能使生物、环境和社会科学领域的科学家受益。鉴于物种范围图是生物学中最常用和最熟悉的信息产品之一，生命地图对社会的潜在更广泛的影响和利益是显著的。物种分布知识与我们这个时代最大的挑战之一有关：解释生物多样性、生态系统和人类健康之间的联系，以及持续的全球环境变化如何影响我们的自然遗产和资本。生命地图基础设施在教育方面的应用机会很多。令人兴奋的一步将是制作视频教程，介绍生命地图的工作原理，以及它如何在生物多样性知识创造中发挥重要作用，同时解释有关物种范围、生物多样性以及如何衡量其变化的核心概念。这些视频是可扩展的手段，可以接触到大量观众，并将通过私人机构及其机构外展计划进行协调。关于这个项目的更多信息可以在www.mappinglife.org上找到。

An award is made to Yale University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Cornell University to advance content provision and development of the existing prototype Map of Life platform. Knowledge about the geographic occurrence of species is at the heart of much of ecology, evolution and conservation, and of tremendous societal importance. While digital species distribution products exist, they remain un-integrated and cannot serve critical societal needs. The Map of Life platform was developed to begin to solve this need. A key goal of this project is to use novel approaches to mobilize and integrate diverse types of data such that their collective strengths overcome individual weaknesses. Specifically, this project will combine, on a single website, a variety of distribution data types from many different sources, range products that integrate these, deductively and inductively modeled predictions, and reports about the spatial and environmental knowledgebase for species. When completed, users from across a broad spectrum, from researchers with published data to citizen scientists, will be able to upload data, edit input or output and directly improve or comment on maps, iteratively leading to improved species distribution knowledge. Users will be able to directly query or download any redistributable content. Map of Life will thus facilitate a dramatically improved and rigorous accounting of the spatial context of species in science and will likely benefit scientists across the biological, environmental and social sciences.Given that species range maps are one of the most commonly used and familiar information products in biology, the potential broader impacts and benefits of Map of Life to society are remarkable. Species distribution knowledge ties to one of the greatest challenges of our time: explaining the links between biodiversity, ecosystems and human health, and how ongoing global environmental changes are impacting our natural heritage and capital. Opportunity abounds for strong educational uses of the Map of Life infrastructure. An exciting step will be the production of video tutorials covering how Map of Life works and how it can serve an important role in biodiversity knowledge creation, along with explaining core concepts about species ranges, biodiversity, and how to measure its change. Such videos are scalable means to reach large audiences and will be coordinated through the PIs and their institutional outreach programs. More information about this project can be found at: www.mappinglife.org.