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分布范围的地理格局，可以揭示一个物种的生态学及其偏好的栖息地和气候。了解多种物种重叠的范围和物种多样性高的“热点”存在的地方，有助于解释影响或决定现代物种发生模式以及自然群落物种组成的更大的地理和进化因素。Lifemapper项目维护着一个物种分布数据库，并发布记录地球陆生物种发生情况的在线地图。Lifemapper项目还根据与当前或预测的未来气候的相关性，创建了物种潜在分布的模型。该项目的目标是通过在研究和计算方法中纳入景观特性，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。景观特征影响物种对栖息地的偏好，也可能成为物种向新地区迁移的障碍。例如，非常小块的首选栖息地可能不足以支持一个物种的种群，甚至不足以支持它作为临时迁移到其他首选栖息地的路径。第二个项目目标是通过自动创建和组装不同气候情景下的多物种数据集，从而改变与生物多样性模式建模相关的研究实践，这将大大加快对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，使物种发生数据提供者（如自然历史博物馆、生物标本库和观察物种的公民科学家）能够跟踪其物种发生数据如何用于生物多样性模型。这些数据使用反馈信息将对美国物种信息提供者评估效用和记录他们整理的物种数据的再利用非常有用。生物多样性模式的知识经常用于支持保护决策和政策。模拟气候变化对自然动植物群落物种多样性的潜在影响，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服务的能力的一个重要因素，也是维持用于衍生新作物、作物性状和人类药物的遗传多样性的野生来源的一个重要因素。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