ABI Sustaining: eBird: Maintaining the Cyberinfrastructure to Support the Collection, Storage, Archive, Analysis, and Access to a Global Biodiversity Data Resource

康奈尔大学获得一笔赠款，以支持eBird的持续指数增长，eBird是全球鸟类生物多样性的在线数据资源。eBird于2002年推出，为观鸟者开启了一个实时在线清单的新时代，并很快成为世界上最大的公民科学项目之一。到2012年，eBird已经积累了1亿个鸟类观察数据，2014年初，这个数字是1.7亿-在短短两年内将前十年的数据翻了一番。eBird在全球拥有超过20万名公民科学参与者，是一个全球规模的实时鸟类监测机制，正在创新新的保护模式。例如，加州的一个首创的保护项目正在使用eBird模型，在特定的地方，在正确的时间，为水禽和滨鸟在迁徙过程中，针对稻田的洪水。eBird的公开数据已经被6,000多名学生、教育工作者、政府工作人员和研究人员下载，产生了110多篇同行评议的科学论文。忠实于它的开始，eBird仍然是作为观鸟的基本工具。每年有超过700万人访问eBird，通过交互式探索、可视化和分析工具探索数据，帮助观鸟者找到更多的鸟类。基础和应用生态学的大部分研究都建立在对物种分布和丰度的描述上。涵盖广泛空间尺度的长期、组织良好的数据对于记录变化、对其原因提出假设以及最终了解这些变化与整体生态系统健康和功能的关系是必要的。虽然收集单一物种的发生数据是一个很好理解的过程，但协调收集，管理，访问和存储这些数据并不是一项小任务。适当的结构和持续，支持大型物种发生数据集的网络基础设施可以增加数据的价值，而不仅仅是作为汇总观测结果的工具。eBird数据管理基础设施为学生、科学家、土地管理者、政府和业余爱好者提供了独特的资源。eBird的数据：（1）来自一个单一的，持续收集和策划的来源，该来源是公开可用的，并广泛使用，（2）代表了全球所有生物体分布的所有可用数据的很大一部分，（3）提供这些数据不仅以最小的形式，而且作为一组增值产品，降低了使用这些数据所需的数据管理门槛。有关eBird的更多信息，请访问其网站http://ebird.org。

Cornell University is awarded a grant to support the continued exponential growth of eBird, an online data resource for global bird biodiversity. With its launch in 2002, eBird opened a new era of live, online checklisting for birders, and it soon became one of the world's largest citizen-science projects. By 2012, eBird had amassed 100 million total bird observations, and early in 2014 that number is 170 million-on track to double the previous decade's worth of data in just 2 years. With more than 200,000 citizen-science participants worldwide, eBird acts as a global-scale, real-time bird monitoring mechanism that is innovating new models of conservation. For example, a first-of-its-kind conservation project in California is using eBird models to target the flooding of rice fields in the specific places, and at precisely the right times, for waterfowl and shorebirds during migration. eBird's openly available data has been downloaded by more than 6,000 students, educators, government staff, and researchers, resulting in more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific papers. True to its beginnings, eBird is still grounded in serving as an essential tool for birding. More than 7 million people access eBird every year to explore data through interactive exploration, visualization and analysis tools that help birders find more birds.Much of the research in basic and applied ecology is founded in descriptions of distribution and abundance of species. Long-term, well-organized data covering broad spatial scales are necessary for documenting change, generating hypotheses for their causes, and ultimately understanding how these changes relate to overall ecosystem health and function. While collecting a single-species occurrence datum is a well-understood process, the coordinated collection, curation, access, and storage of these data is no small task. Appropriately structured and sustained, the cyberinfrastructure that supports large species occurrence datasets can add value to the data, instead of merely acting as a tool for aggregating observations. The eBird data management infrastructure provides a unique resource for students, scientists, land managers, governments and amateurs. eBird's data: (1) come from a single, consistently gathered and curated source that is openly available and widely in use, (2) represents a substantial proportion of all available data on distribution of all organisms globally, and (3) provides these data in not just minimal form but as a set of value-added products that lower the threshold of data management needed to use these data. For more information about eBird, visit its website at http://ebird.org.