Species2000 Asia Oceania

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What does Species 2000 Asia Oceania Do ?

Secretariat: Laboratory of Intellectual Fundamentals for Environmental Studies
National Institute for Environmental Studies
Address:16-2 Onogawa Tsukuba Ibaraki, 305-8506
FAX:+81-29-850-2778
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INTRODUCTION

Background

Global environmental changes and rapid development in Asian and Oceanic region threaten the richness of biological diversity in the region. It is vital to take international measure to protect the regional asset, biodiveristy. Convention of Biological Diversity clearly declared that the contracting parties should be aware of general lack of information and knowledge regarding biological diversity and of the urgent need to develop scientific, technical and institutional capacities to provide the basic understanding upon which to plan and implement appropriate measures.

In Asia and Oceania the countries are distributed in wide scattered area where carries tremendous richness of biodiversity. The seamless monitoring of such varieties of species is however, not effectively performed and evaluated. The information available in this region for researchers and policy makers is limited. This makes it difficult for researchers to analyze ecological balance and for policy makers and conservation center to take appropriate measure in conservation of biodiversity.

The biodiversity centers in those countries or regions are growing rapidly. Informational science, networking capabilities can facilitate to link and share the relevant information for biodiversity related studies. These rapidly growing facilities for studying biodiversity are better to build task-sharing mechanism to maximize efficiency and create synergy of data development and use.

Importance of Networking Researchers in Asia and Oceania

For further development of knowledge on biodiversity, international mechanism is needed to make biodiversity data and information more accurate, stable and accessible from the regional researchers and worldwide users. There are initiatives taken by different international organizations, e.g. Clearing House Mechanisms (CHM) of Convention of Biological Diversity, Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI), Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) etc. Species 2000 became an associate participant of GBIF in March 2001. Species 2000 is to develop "core" catalog of species names which can be used as non-redundant information set to build up world-wide distributed biodiversity information system. Each initiative may share and sometimes distinguish the knowledge of distributed institutions conducting research and monitoring of biodiversity, respectively.

The goal of Global Species 2000 is to provide a stable checklist for all known species. Species 2000 Asia Oceania supports this concept and will undertake specific regional agctivities not otherwise done, such as regional checklist, value added regional and local information related taxonomy and ecology.

The knowledge that Species 2000 tries to integrate through the accessibility of "Catalog of Names" contains elements of information that only regional researchers on biodiversity can provide. However, the status of those data are not well visualized to the public and sometimes kept at private institutes as non-digital information. It is vital to build a mechanism to store those data in digital form and develop an interface with user friendly manner to provide accessibility and further analytical operability. The researchers in Asian and Oceanic region need to cooperate to develop such mechanisms. In June 2001 Species 2000 and ITIS met decipline to join the effort to complete the task within ten years under the name of "Catalog of Life".

Aims of the Species 2000 Asia Oceania

GBIF is planned to be distributed information systems cored with "Electronic Catalog of Names", with appropriate link and/or share mechanism to/with "Biological Specimen Data", "Species Bank" and "Biodiversity Literature Resources". Compiling the information about living organisms and ecosystems, especially those whose existence are threatened and those of potential economic importance is recommended to inter-link from "Catalog of Names". Among those necessary elements of GBIF and inter-linked information, "Ecosystem data" and "Ecological Data" are developed independently at institute level and results of researchers are not fully integrated to provide for ecological analysis over the wide area of Asia and Oceania. Appropriate networking of the activities of rapidly growing biodiversity centers and research institutes in Asian Oceanic countries should facilitate to build inter-linked "Ecosystem data" and "Ecological Data" and possibly

Species 2000 Asia Oceania aims to support the development of "Catalog of Life" by supporting appropriate database developers in Asian Oceanic Region as a core element of GBIF and to support to maintain it for long term.

Species 2000 Asia Oceania aims to develop mechanism to integrate researchers' data on biodiversity to build reliable and accessible "Ecological and other relevant Biological Data" in our own region by assisting information activity.

To make better and more efficient use of data in Asia Oceania using informatics-based approaches we should accelerate;

		Identifying potent research groups that have been accumulating records on biodiversity.
		Encouraging local partner-organizations to let them take strong leadership in the region.
		Developing cooperative research network among the partner organizations.
		Developing databases of regional biodiversity of their own at local institutes.
		Developing software and tools for integrative use of database contents from the distributed databases.
		Developing computer systems and technological applications which emulate specific aspects of conservation of biodiversity.
		Supporting Global Taxonomy Initiative National Focal Points in Asia and Oceania

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