The LTER Network Office is considering the formation of a consortium with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), and the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at the University of Kansas (KU) (see the article on the CC meeting).
The purpose of this consortium would be to promote the integration and synthesis of ecological, evolutionary, and systematics data through advances in bioinformatics. Specific goals of the consortium include a broader understanding of biological patterns and processes, closer partnerships among the disciplines involved, an increased appreciation for the value of biological data, and an enhanced capacity to provide information for wise stewardship of the environment. The members contribute experience in ecology, systematics, evolutionary biology, networking, information management, concept-ualization, and technology development. An article describing the consortium will appear in a future issue of Nature.
The ecological community in the United States is represented in whole or part by a variety of institutions and organizations. The LTER Network has many opportunities to interact with organizations as diverse as the Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS), NCEAS, SDSC, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and various museums of natural history. There also exists strong potential for partnerships between LTER and other stewards of the Nation’s ecological data and natural history collections.
Natural history museums serve as repositories for information relevant to the description of long-term changes in the biota. OBFS, TNC, and many federal and state agencies share similar responsibilities for the acquisition, management, and dissemination of ecological information. Future funding initiatives will emphasize the development of consortia among these kinds of institutions, so the challenges inherent in developing these consortia need to be addressed now. The most active partnership at present comprises the LTER Network, NCEAS, and SDSC, who are preparing a cooperative proposal to the KDI competition at the National Science Foundation. OBFS member stations also play a key role in this proposal as a test bed for the technology and a source of data. The KDI proposal is designed to provide mechanisms to increase accessibility to data from ecology and related disciplines.
It complements in many ways a successful KDI proposal from the University of Kansas, which seeks to integrate access to information from museum collections.
Cooperation between the KU-Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) project and the proposed NCEAS/LTERI SDSC-KDI project is a first step towards integrating access to ecological and collections data. A consortium involving LTER sites, field stations, NGOs, government agencies, and museum collections can complement the KDI efforts by coordinating and standardizing data collection, description, and storage. The LTER Information Managers can certainly play a leadership role in this effort.