Collaborative Research: Digitization TCN: InvertEBase: Reaching Back to See the Future: Species-rich Invertebrate Faunas Document Causes and Consequences of Biodiversity Shifts

北美生物多样性的快速变化对基本生态系统服务产生了重大影响，从对土壤健康和养分循环的影响到对农业、林业和水质的影响。入侵物种数量的激增威胁着淡水和陆地栖息地，并可能影响国家的自然资源。方便地获得可靠的、经过专业审查的物种发生、丰度和分布范围的基线数据，并监测这些参数如何随时间变化，将有助于保护国家的自然资源，并大大提高有效恢复、土地管理规划和保护管理的能力。许多本科生将接受数字化技术培训，并将开发模块化展览，以吸引公众对生物多样性变化的兴趣。有效的监测需要方便地以电子方式获取历史标本基线信息，以便进行时间和区域物种多样性比较，从而促进明智的土地管理决策。大量的标本数据被安置在国家自然历史收藏中，但这些数据中的大多数不容易从数字资源中获取。科学标本收集的规模和复杂性要求在获取标本数据方面取得重大技术进步。这个为期四年的合作项目的目标是将美国六个州（伊利诺伊州，俄亥俄州，阿尔阿尔巴纳州，密歇根州，俄亥俄州，宾夕法尼亚州）的六个主要博物馆的10个节肢动物和软体动物收藏品中的200万个标本及其位置数据快速数字化。该项目将利用光学字符和语音识别技术显著自动化标本数据采集。该项目的数字化数据将立即用于基于栖息地的分布建模和分析。该奖项是国家生物馆藏数字化资源的一部分，通过推进生物馆藏数字化计划，该奖项产生的所有数据将通过国家资源（iDigBio.org）提供。

The rapid biodiversity change in North America has significant effects on essential ecosystem services, from impact on soil health and nutrient cycling, to agriculture, forestry and water quality. Exploding populations of invasive species threaten fresh water and terrestrial habitats and potentially impact the natural resources of the nation. Easy access to robust, expertly vetted baseline data for species occurrences, abundances, and distribution ranges, and monitoring how these parameters have changed through time, will facilitate the protection of the nation's natural resources, and vastly improve the capacity for effective restoration, land management planning, and conservation management. Numerous undergraduate students will receive training in digitization technologies and a modular exhibit will be developed to engage public interest in biodiversity changes.Effective monitoring requires easy electronic access to historical specimen baseline information for temporal and regional species diversity comparisons that can facilitate informed land management decisions. Vast amounts of specimen data are housed within the nation's natural history collections, but most of these data are not readily accessible from digital resources. Size and complexity of scientific specimen collections require major technological advances in capturing specimen data. The goal of this four-year collaborative project is the rapid digitization of 2 million specimens and their locality data from ten arthropod and mollusk collections housed at six major US museums in six states (Il, OH, AL,MI, DE, PA). This project will significantly automate specimen data capture by utilizing optical character and voice-recognition technologies. The digitized data from this project will be immediately deployed for habitat-based distribution modeling and analyses.This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).