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 ccess to information about the world's biodiversity
is badly needed by a wide range of users, say resource managers,
policy-makers, conservationists, scientists and the general public.
In order to bring such information to the Internet, where it
will be freely accessible to anyone, a consortium of 28 interested
countries and intergovernmental organizations is coordinating
plans to form the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
GBIF will consist of a series of interconnected databases containing
information about the world's living organisms, from bacteria
to plants to mammals.
 "GBIF
will be an outstanding tool of great value," according to
James Edwards, deputy assistant director for biological sciences
at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Edwards chairs the
interim steering committee for GBIF. In a recent issue of the
journal Science, Edwards and coauthors discuss the GBIF.
The current data about biodiversity are either scattered in many
local databases, or reside on paper or other media not amenable
to interactive searching. GBIF is a new framework for facilitating
the digitization of biodiversity data, for compiling the data
into searchable databases (both existing and newly formed ones),
and for ensuring compatibility among these databases. In concert
with other existing efforts, there will be developed, through
GBIF, a complete Catalog of the Names of Known Organisms and
search engines to mine the vast quantities of biodiversity data.
Biodiversity
is distributed all over the earth, with the highest concentration
in tropical regions, especially in developing countries, and
in the oceans. In contrast, scientific information about biodiversity
is largely concentrated in major centers in developed countries,
especially in the scientific collections of the world's natural
history museums, herbaria, and microorganismal repositories.
At present, it is more likely that information on the plants
of many regions of Africa is stored in an herbarium in Europe,
for example, rather than in its source country, explains Edwards.
Through GBIF, the intent is to change that, by making the data
available to anyone, anywhere, who has access to the Internet.
The sustainable
use and management of biodiversity will require that information
about it be available when and where that information is needed
by decision makers and scientists alike, Edwards says. Because
biodiversity information is not immediately at hand, it is often
not applied in policy or management decisions that affect the
organisms involved, nor is that information readily accessible
by research scientists.
At the heart
of GBIF will be a catalog of the scientific names of all the
world's species. Longer-term goals for GBIF are to develop both
a digital library of biodiversity knowledge drawn from information
available in print libraries and "Species Bank," a
compilation of facts about each individual species. The target
date for establishing GBIF is early in 2001. GBIF will be open
and freely available to anyone with access to the World Wide
Web. Most of its activities will be carried out within member
countries, supported by their national funding programs.
"GBIF
will aid in advancing scientific research in a host of areas,
including systematics, conservation biology, ecology, agriculture,
biomedicine, and environmental management," says Edwards.
"It will serve the economic and quality-of-life interests
of society and will provide a basis from which our knowledge
of the natural world can grow rapidly and in a manner that avoids
duplication of effort and expenditure." 
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