63urn:lsid:arphahub.com:pub:0E0032F4-55AE-5263-8B3C-F4DD637C30C2Biodiversity Information Science and StandardsBISS2535-0897Pensoft Publishers10.3897/biss.3.375013750112189Conference AbstractSI46 - Biodiversity Virtual Research Environments: past, present & possible futuresThe Antarctic Biodiversity Portal, an Online Ecosystem for Linking, Integrating and Disseminating Antarctic Biodiversity InformationGanYi-Mingymgan@naturalsciences.be1SweetloveMaximemsweetlove@naturalsciences.be1Van de PutteAntonantonarctica@gmail.comhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1336-55541Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, BelgiumRoyal Belgian Institute of Natural SciencesBrusselsBelgium
Corresponding authors: Yi-Ming Gan (ymgan@naturalsciences.be), Maxime Sweetlove (msweetlove@naturalsciences.be), Anton Van de Putte (antonarctica@gmail.com).
Academic editor:
2019170720193e3750141A1AD9D-F284-5311-9AE1-BF13CE26655F335095519062019Yi-Ming Gan, Maxime Sweetlove, Anton Van de PutteThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The Antarctic Biodiversity portal (biodiversity.aq) is a gateway to a wide variety of Antarctic biodiversity information and tools. Launched in 2005 as the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) - Marine Biodiversity Information Network (SCAR-MarBIN, scarmarbin.be) and the Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS, marinespecies.org/rams/), the system has grown in scope from purely marine to include terrestrial information.
Biodiversity.aq is a SCAR product, currently supported by Belspo (Belgian Science Policy) as one of the Belgian contributions to the European Lifewatch-European Research Infrastructure Consortium (Lifewatch-ERIC). The goal of Lifewatch is to provide access to: distributed observatories/sensor networks; interoperable databases, existing (data-)networks, using accepted standards; high performance computing (HPC) and grid power, including the use of the state-of-the-art of cloud and big data paradigm technologies; software and tools for visualization, analysis and modeling.
Here we provide an overview of the most recent advances in the biodiversity.aq online ecosystem, a number of use cases as well as an overview of future directions. Some of the most notable components are:
The Register of Antarctic Species (RAS, ras.biodiversity.aq) is a component of the Lifewatch Taxonomic Backbone and provides an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine and terrestrial species in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. It serves as a reference guide for users to interpret taxonomic literature, as valid names and other names in use are both provided.
Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT, ipt.biodiversity.aq) allows disseminating Antarctic biodiversity data into global initiatives such as the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS, obis.org) as Antarctic node of OBIS (Ant-OBIS, also formerly known as SCAR-MarBIN) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, gbif.org) as Antarctic Biodiversity Information Facility (AntaBIF). Data that can be made available include metadata, species checklists, species occurrence data and more recently, sampling event-based data. Data from these international portals can be accessed through data.biodiversity.aq.
Through SCAR, Biodiversity.aq builds on an international network of expert that provide expert knowledge on taxonomy, species distribution,and ecology. It provides a strong and tested platform for sharing, integrating, discovering and analysing Antarctic biodiversity information originating from a variety of sources into a distributed system.
Antarcticbiodiversitydata managementFederaal Wetenschapsbeleid501100002749http://doi.org/10.13039/5011000027492019Biodiversity_NextBiodiversity_Next 2019Leiden, The NetherlandsA joint conference by The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), a new pan-European Research Infrastructure initiative (DiSSCo), the national resource for digitized information about vouchered natural history collections (iDigBio), Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and LifeWatch ERIC, the e-Science and Technology European Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research.Presenting author