IABIN Invasives Information Network

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IABIN Invasives Information Network
Creating an Inter-American Network for Invasive
Species Information
I3N

• Biodiversity Informatics Symposium, Indaiatuba,
  October 22, 2002
• Andrea Grosse, US Geological Survey, USA

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Inter- American Biodiversity Information Network

• Technical and scientific cooperation in the
  Americas using the Internet
• Information for decision-making and education

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Ultimate Objectives
Pilot project

• Metadata on invasive species information
• Web-accessible
• Distributed
• Local ownership
• Integrated
• Common standards

• Single entry point
• Search across nodes

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I3N Pilot Project

• Seed grants from US State Department
• 12,000 ( x 11 countries)

Additional funding from NBII and organizations in
countries
Technical collaboration

• ICE/UC Davis
• NBII
• CABS/CI
• NatureServe

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Participants
11 Countries New countries joining without seed
funding
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Objectives of Pilot Project

• Develop standard catalogs in each country
• Make catalogs Web-accessible
• Build capacity

Species
Experts
Projects
Data sets
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I3N Cataloguer

• Microsoft Access 2000
• Three languages
• Freely available

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I3N Cataloguer
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I3N Cataloguer
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Preliminary Results
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Preliminary Results
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Preliminary Results
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Reported Benefits
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Reported Benefits
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Reported Benefits
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Reported Benefits
Trained persons directly involved in data
management
Enabled identification of gaps in knowledge and
institutional capacity
Created photo collection
Developed relationship between institutions
within country
Will contribute to development of national
invasive species strategy
Increased knowledge about invasive species
management
Contributed to list of species for a resolution
on controlling entry of exotic species
Provides access to unpublished or scattered data
Will guide national legislation process by
creating legal bases for bio-security regulations
Benefited biodiversity enabling activities under
the CBD
Countrys scientific community became interested
in invasive species
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Local Challenges
Insufficient information No documentation of
presence and impact of invasives in natural
ecosystems Difficulty in identifying species Not
enough taxonomists and other scientists
specializing in invasive species
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Local Challenges
Data Access Collections not cataloged, updated,
or digitized Information dispersed Access denied
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Technical Challenges

• Terminology
• especie invasiva, invasora, alien, inmigrante,
  no nativa, aclimatizada, no indígena, extraña,
  extranjera, exótica, naturalizada, xenobiota
• Cataloging tool
• User-friendliness
• Multi-lingual versions
• Compatibility with local system
• Cost availability of application

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Coordination Challenges

• Differences in co-financing
• Collaboration
• Native language of project leaders
• Translation cost effort
• Listserv

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Next Steps

• Review metadata fields controlled vocabulary
• Trilingual invasive species management thesaurus
• Improve Cataloguer
• Encourage XML output
• Establish virtual community

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Outstanding Issues

• Updating catalogs
• Integrating new countries
• Harvesting and search tool
• Integrate all XML records
• Single search interface

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Participate!
Tools
Metadata
Web page
Ideas
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www.iabin-us.org
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www.iabin-us.org