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

野生物种生活在哪里，为什么生活，是研究生物地理学的研究人员的基本问题。了解植物和动物物种范围的地理模式可以揭示一个物种的生态及其偏好的栖息地和气候。了解多个物种的范围在哪里重叠，在哪里存在物种多样性高的“热点”，有助于解释更大的地理和进化因素，这些因素影响或决定了现代物种发生模式以及自然群落的物种组成。救生员项目维护一个物种分布数据库，并发布记录地球陆地物种发生情况的在线地图。Lifemapper项目还基于与当前或预测的未来气候的相关性来创建物种潜在分布的模型。该项目的一个目标是通过在研究和计算方法中包括景观的特性，使计算机生成的物种分布模型(基于自然历史博物馆标本数据)更加真实。景观特征会影响物种偏好的栖息地选择，也会阻碍物种迁移到新的区域。例如，极小的首选栖息地斑块可能不足以支持一个物种的种群，甚至不足以支持将其临时用作迁移到其他首选栖息地的路径。第二个项目目标将改变与生物多样性模式建模相关的研究做法，为不同的气候情景自动创建和汇编多物种数据集，这将极大地加快全球生物多样性模式的研究。第三，该项目将创建互联网软件工具，允许自然历史博物馆、生物标本储存库和观察物种的公民科学家等物种出现数据提供商跟踪他们的物种出现数据如何被用于生物多样性模型。这些数据使用反馈信息将有助于美国物种信息提供者评估其效用并记录其经过管理的物种数据的再利用。生物多样性模式的知识经常被用来支持保护决策和政策。对气候变化对自然动植物群落物种多样性的潜在影响进行建模，对于了解美国和全球物种多样性的潜在未来模式和变化非常重要。维持生物多样性是我们维持健康的自然生态系统及其对人类社会的服务的能力的重要因素，也是维持野生遗传多样性来源以获得新作物、作物性状和人类药物的重要因素。欲了解更多信息，请访问：http://www.lifemapper.org。

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