Ocean Biogeographic Information System-USA: A data-centric view of our oceans

Background/Question/Methods

Humans are profoundly dependent on marine resources and ecosystems, at the same time human impacts also endanger the productivity and sustainability of these systems. Richer knowledge of biological and ecological processes at all spatial scales is desperately needed, as are methods for extending the research and management value of pre-existing investments in marine data gathering. Advances in global biodiversity informatics techniques, applied to marine domains, can enhance the role of data in marine solutions. One method for bringing together marine biological data is through Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS: http://iobis.org) – a distributed data system. OBIS consists of member nodes that perform the work of incorporating data from multiple sources. The U.S. Geological Survey hosts the United States member node of OBIS – OBIS-USA (http://www.USGS.gov/obis-usa/). OBIS-USA helps address marine ecological issues through two features: First, OBIS-USA seeks out and includes biological data for all taxa, so OBIS-USA biological data can be used to represent ecosystem-scale biological diversity and dynamics. Second, through use of internationally recognized data and metadata standards, OBIS-USA provides data that are primed for integration with other biotic and abiotic data sources, including physical oceanography, ocean chemistry, climate, human use, and other marine data types.

Results/Conclusions

OBIS-USA currently contains a total of 149 datasets from 39 unique participants spanning 84,220 taxa and a grand total of 7,178,729 records, with most recent additions from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Texas Parks and Wildlife Division, and a stable isotope study on chemoautrophic organisms. By gathering marine data for the United States, OBIS-USA makes vital data accessible and highlights possible data gaps, which for researchers, indicates the best places to conduct new research. However, gathering datasets can be a difficult task. Although attitudes are evolving, current science culture still focuses on the publication of peer-reviewed journal articles. Consequently, this focus can limit access and potentially neglect continuing valuable uses of original data. In addition, researchers are often reluctant to share their data because they fear misattribution or misuse of the data or that publications based on the data will occur before they have published themselves. In light of this, OBIS-USA respects embargo expectations and emphasizes attribution. OBIS-USA works with researchers to help them understand the global benefit of standardizing and sharing their data. OBIS-USA's enrollment process bring new data into the database, aligning data with standards, documenting it, and making it discoverable, accessible, and ready for integration.