The Natural History Museum
A new free access, worldwide online information system which will explore life on earth is now under construction.
Involving 500 science and technology experts from more than 50 countries, the new site was announced at the Natural History Museum this week (June 2009) at the beginning of the e-Biosphere 09 conference.
The system will require continued global scientific collaboration to create the virtual observatory, which will allow the unprecedented monitoring and study of life on earth.
Users will be able to click seamlessly from images of a plant or animal specimen to specific information about its species and genetic code. The online database will also need an army of citizen scientists to help reveal and verify planetary changes such as the density and area of forest cover or the time plants flower locally.
The new facility will allow searches of life forms big and small, from identifying a strange insect in your garden to looking at a whole forest in minute detail. For the latter visitors will be able to look at tree species, the shape of the leaves on the trees and the colour of its flowers, right down to the insects that feed on them and the DNA of the microbes that live on the insects.
(above) Picture courtesy NHM
"Forty years ago astronauts took pictures of the earth from the moon. e-Biosphere 09 is creating a macroscope that will allow billions of people to zoom from the moon to Madagascar to a monkey and its DNA," said Jesse Ausubel, a Program Director of the Alfred P Sloan foundation, New York.
Scientists have said that within ten years they will be able to use the system to track changes in the range and abundance of plant and animal species as the earth's climate changes.
Key areas of the system will include images of species (ARKive), maps of the marine environment (Aquamaps) to genes (DNA bar coding of species).
"The democratisation of biodiversity information is a development of profound importance," said Professor Norman McLeod, the Natural History Museum's Keeper of Palaeontology.
"It is being accomplished through integrated, easy to use tools that allow anyone in the world to extract, manipulate, interact with and contribute information for plants, animals, microbes fungi and other organisms with which we share this planet.
"Tools under development to achieve this goal range from fiendishly complex mathematics of automated species recognition software, to teaching aids that will allow school children to access and analyse primary scientific date for class reports."
For more information visit the e-Biosphere 09 website.
