Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Exhibit Hall A, David L Lawrence Convention Center
Background/Question/Methods
Audio and visual records of species, habitats, research studies, and environmental issues such as deforestation have always been considered useful for education and research, but often as examples or in limited roles. Now millions of media resources are being uploaded into thousands of online galleries, generating a great breadth of potential resources diverse both across and within subjects. Major online galleries, such as Flickr, ARKive, CalPhotos, and the NBII LIFE, are becoming new tools for education and research in their own right, depending on how the resources are treated and presented. For example, students use the image collections within the NBII LIFE (http://life.nbii.gov) to explore particular themes, such as taxonomic groups (animals, fungi, microorganisms, and plants), habitat types (arid, volcanic, wetlands, etc), predation, pollination, diseases and parasitism, ecological processes, and environmental issues. If a media gallery appends detailed information such as date and location to each resource, its collections become very valuable for research; images and their metadata can be used to map species distributions, to monitor habitat changes, and to determine phenological timetables. Furthermore, the potential of linking resources among galleries could allow additional, more interdisciplinary data to be compiled, such as on the species, habitats, geology, and ecological processes of watershed. In order to support research and education, however, the quality and credibility of both the images and their metadata must be ensured, and methods to help link these collections created.
Results/Conclusions
Multiple efforts on both fronts have begun. New cameras collect geospatial and date information; and automatic image and data validation tools are being constructed. The Biodiversity Information Standards organization (TDWG) is formulating new metadata standards specifically for biological media. Finally, institutions are formalizing partnerships to exchange data resources. For example, slides of a habitat taken 25 years ago may be donated to the NBII LIFE, where they are combined with recent photographs of that location from a partner gallery, as well as images of species found in that location. From there these images may be: 1) shared among other image galleries, 2) fed into interactive keys (Discover Life) and online educational sites (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Life), and 3) compiled into larger data sets and used in species modeling (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Through these partnerships, millions of new resources are becoming available. What once was considered a supporting photo (or even a vacation photo), now could be used for research and education far beyond its original purpose.
Audio and visual records of species, habitats, research studies, and environmental issues such as deforestation have always been considered useful for education and research, but often as examples or in limited roles. Now millions of media resources are being uploaded into thousands of online galleries, generating a great breadth of potential resources diverse both across and within subjects. Major online galleries, such as Flickr, ARKive, CalPhotos, and the NBII LIFE, are becoming new tools for education and research in their own right, depending on how the resources are treated and presented. For example, students use the image collections within the NBII LIFE (http://life.nbii.gov) to explore particular themes, such as taxonomic groups (animals, fungi, microorganisms, and plants), habitat types (arid, volcanic, wetlands, etc), predation, pollination, diseases and parasitism, ecological processes, and environmental issues. If a media gallery appends detailed information such as date and location to each resource, its collections become very valuable for research; images and their metadata can be used to map species distributions, to monitor habitat changes, and to determine phenological timetables. Furthermore, the potential of linking resources among galleries could allow additional, more interdisciplinary data to be compiled, such as on the species, habitats, geology, and ecological processes of watershed. In order to support research and education, however, the quality and credibility of both the images and their metadata must be ensured, and methods to help link these collections created.
Results/Conclusions
Multiple efforts on both fronts have begun. New cameras collect geospatial and date information; and automatic image and data validation tools are being constructed. The Biodiversity Information Standards organization (TDWG) is formulating new metadata standards specifically for biological media. Finally, institutions are formalizing partnerships to exchange data resources. For example, slides of a habitat taken 25 years ago may be donated to the NBII LIFE, where they are combined with recent photographs of that location from a partner gallery, as well as images of species found in that location. From there these images may be: 1) shared among other image galleries, 2) fed into interactive keys (Discover Life) and online educational sites (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Life), and 3) compiled into larger data sets and used in species modeling (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility). Through these partnerships, millions of new resources are becoming available. What once was considered a supporting photo (or even a vacation photo), now could be used for research and education far beyond its original purpose.
