New NBII Search Engine Highlighted in The Wildlife Professional

An article appearing in the fall 2009 issue of The Wildlife Professional titled “A Search Engine Revs Up” takes a thoughtful look at the recently introduced search engine and redesigned home page of the USGS National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). The fall issue of this publication is a special issue offering a variety of perspectives on accessing data. The Wildlife Professional is distributed to all members of The Wildlife Society, whose members specialize in the management, conservation, and study of wildlife populations and habitats.

(Photo: cover of The Wildlife Professional Magazine)

Hudson River Watershed Mapping Application Now Live

The Hudson River Watershed Mapper, an interactive mapping tool developed in partnership between CIESIN and The Beacon Institute, is now live and accessible from the Northeast Information Node (NIN). The Mapper lets users incorporate more than 70 sources of scientific and cultural information to create customized maps of one the nation’s most populated and historically significant watersheds. Map layers available include USGS stream gages, which link directly to the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS). The Mapper can be used to visualize a wide range of features about the Watershed, such as demographics, the variability of land use patterns, and the identification of specific agents of water pollution in the region. It also acts as a gateway to a network of sensors and observational technology. Please contact Mark Becker at: mbecker@ciesin.columbia.edu with comments and suggestions for the Hudson River Watershed Mapper.

Vegetation Characterization Products Now Available for Sagamore Hill National Historic Site

USGS-National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Characterization Program (VCP) documentation for Sagamore Hill National Historic Site has been completed and is available on the VCP Web site. Products include aerial photography - graphic of orthophoto mosaic, spatial orthophoto data, and flightline index; project report - photo interpretation key, vegetation descriptions, vegetation key, photos of map class, and accuracy assessment methods and results; field data - graphic of field plots, spatial field plots data, field database, physical descriptive for plots and species list for plots; geospatial vegetation information - graphics of vegetation communities, spatial vegetation data, spatial boundary data, and field photos; accuracy assessment information - graphic of accuracy assessment points, spatial accuracy assessment data, and contingency matrix; metadata, and a link to NPS information about Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. The goal of the VCP is to classify and map the vegetation communities of National Parks that have a natural resource component. Complete documentation is currently available for sixty-one park units and two U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuge units. The VCP is managed by the USGS Center for Biological Informatics in cooperation with the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program. The USGS Vegetation Characterization effort includes the management and upkeep of the VCP protocols, Web-based access to the standards, and the Web-based access to NPS Vegetation Characterization program finished products.

USGS-NBII Scientist To Chair Symposium at International Congress on Biological Invasions

Invasive Species Information Manager Annie Simpson of the USGS - National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) has been invited, and has accepted, to chair a symposium – "Knowledge management, decision-making tools, capacity development, and public awareness" – at the International Congress on Biological Invasions. The Congress will take place in Fuzhou, China, November 2-6, 2009. Ms. Simpson will also make an oral presentation titled "The Global Invasive Species Information Network: information sharing for informed decision-making." Hundreds of invasive species specialists from around the world will convene at the Congress to exchange ideas on improving the management of biological invasions at national, regional, and global levels.

Visit the International Congress on Biological Invasions website for more information about the upcoming Congress.

(Photo: Inflorescence of Eichhornia crassipes at Berrimah, Northern Territory, Australia (Photo by Colin Wilson, from the Global Invasive Species Database)

USGS Cooperative Fishery Research – Data Project

Alan Friedlander, formerly with NOAA Fisheries National Ocean Service (NOS)/National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) joined USGS in 2009. Alan is taking over for Jim Parrish, as adjunct faculty at University of Hawaii-Manoa and lead of the Hawai’i Cooperative Fishery Research Unit. With assistance from Pacific Basin Information Node (PBIN) staff, Alan is organizing data related to fish biomass and protected area studies dating back to the early 1970s from field sites throughout the Hawaiian archipelago. PBIN staff and collaborators are assisting with data integration, migration to modern relational database structure, and updates of valid taxonomic names. Alan has several million individual observation records describing hundreds of unique fish species.

(Photo: Maui, Hawaii, man fishing. Credit: John J. Mossesso, NBII Life photos)

Vegetation Characterization Products Available for Gateway National Recreation Area, Mesa Verde National Park, New River Gorge

USGS-National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Characterization Program (VCP) documentation for Gateway National Recreation Area, Mesa Verde National Park, New River Gorge National River, and Weir Farm National Historic Site has been completed and is available on the Vegetation Characterization Program Web site and the Weir Farm National Historic Site. Products include aerial photography - graphic of orthophoto mosaic, spatial orthophoto data, and flightline index; project report - photo interpretation key, vegetation descriptions, vegetation key, photos of map class, and accuracy assessment methods and results; field data - graphic of field plots, spatial field plots data, field database, physical descriptive for plots and species list for plots; geospatial vegetation information - graphics of vegetation communities, spatial vegetation data, spatial boundary data, and field photos; accuracy assessment information - graphic of accuracy assessment points, spatial accuracy assessment data, and contingency matrix; metadata, and a link to NPS information about Gateway National Recreation Area, Mesa Verde National Park, New River Gorge National River, and Weir Farm National Historic Site.

For more information, visit the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory & Monitoring - Vegetation Mapping Program website.

(Photo: Mesa Verde national Park photo. Mesa Verde National Park is comprised 21,648 ha (53,494 ac), and is part of the plateau country of southwestern Colorado, and is located between the towns of Cortez and Mancos.)

Plans to Enhance BAMONA Spatially

In addition to ongoing data collection and maintenance this coming year, the Big Sky Institute plans to convert the Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) database into a geospatial database, develop a Web mapping service, and develop a visualization capability for the BAMONA data set that will support WMS, KML, and/or other accepted standards. The mapping service will be interoperable with NBII Web sites and species page mashups, the USGS National Map Viewer, Google Earth, and other NBII partners/projects such as the Cactus Moth Monitoring and Detection Network that is coordinated by the Invasive Species Information Node (ISIN) partner John Madsen with the Mississippi State University GeoSystems Research Institute. This project is being supported by multiple NBII nodes including Mountain Prairie, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Pacific Basin. The outcome will provide content for regional nodes across the NBII network.

For a list of recent updates, visit the BAMONA blog.

(Photo: Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) website screen image)