NBII Briefs U.S. National Committee for the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)

On March 25, 2010, Mark Fornwall of the National Biological Information Infrastructure's (NBII) OBIS-USA provided a briefing to the US committee on the transition of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) to the IOC's International Oceanographic Data Exchange (IODE).  His remarks covered the results of a planning session convened last fall at the IODE headquarters in Belgium.  The adoption of OBIS by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) gives the world's most comprehensive data base on marine biogeographic data a permanent home and places it in an optimal position to integrate marine biogeographic data with other oceanographic data for use by ocean scientists and resource managers.  OBIS-USA is the U.S. regional node of the International Ocean Biogeographic Information System (iOBIS). OBIS-USA was organized by USGS under the NBII as a part of the mission to coordinate the development of the nation’s repository for data on national biological resources.


Photo: Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), Hawaii. Photo by Paul Wang. Photo courtesy of USGS.