Building the Biodiversity Knowledge Engine (BKE)

Maintaining the web of life is central to the health of the planet, yet, today, biodiversity is threatened in every corner. How can we avert the 6^th great extinction? I claim a group of just 200 dedicated people, with expertise in computer engineering, taxonomy, and ecology, can use citizen science to engage people with passion to collect natural history observations and build the Biodiversity Knowledge Engine. The BKE will channel our collective biodiversity intelligence, provide unparallelled data about biodiversity, spread the word of the biodiversity crisis beyond academia, and create the next generation of environmental biologists.