Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Transforming Biodiversity Analysis with Landscapes, Automation, and Provenance

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Where wild species live, and why, are basic questions for researchers who study biogeography. Understanding the geographical patterns of plant and animal species' ranges reveals much about the ecology of a species and its preferred habitat and climate. Knowing where the ranges of multiple species overlap and where "hot spots" of high species diversity exist, help to explain larger geographic and evolutionary factors which have influenced or determined modern day species occurrence patterns as well as species composition of natural communities. The Lifemapper Project maintains a species distribution database and publishes online maps documenting the occurrence of Earth's terrestrial species. The Lifemapper Project also creates models of the potential distribution of species based on correlations with present day or predicted future climates.A goal of this project is to make computer generated models of species distributions (based on natural history museum specimen data) more realistic by including in research and computational methods, the properties of the landscapes. Landscape features influence species preferred habitat choice and also can present barriers to species migration into new areas. For example very small patches of preferred habitat may not be large enough to support a population of a species, or even adequate to support its temporary use as a migration path to other preferred habitat locations. A second project objective will transform research practices associated with biodiversity pattern modeling by automating the creation and assembly of multi-species data sets, for different climate scenarios, which will greatly accelerate research on global biodiversity patterns. Third, this project will create internet software tools which allow species occurrence data providers such as natural history museums, biological specimen repositories, and citizen scientists who observe species, to track how their species occurrence data is being used in biodiversity models. This data usage feedback information will be useful for U.S. providers of species information to evaluate the utility and document the re-use of their curated species data. Knowledge of patterns of biological diversity are often used to support conservation decisions and policy. Modeling the potential impact of climate change on species diversity of natural plant and animal communities is important for understanding potential future patterns and changes to species diversity in the U.S. and globally. Sustaining the biological diversity is an important factor in our ability to maintain healthy natural ecosystems and their services to human society, as well as to sustain wild sources of genetic diversity for deriving new crops, crop traits, and human medicines. MOre information can be found at: http://www.lifemapper.org