Die Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) - Struktur, Aufgaben und Ziele.

Abstract

After more than three years of preparatory work by the OECD Megascience Forum, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) was officially established in 2001 with the goal to make scientific biodiversity data freely available and more useful by linking databases through the internet. As a worldwide research endeavour, GBIF currently has 47 countries and 29 international organisations as its members, all of which have committed themselves to share freely biodiversity data according to common standards through their own data nodes. The organisation is controlled by a Governing Board consisting of representatives from all members, supported by several committees and advisory groups. The GBIF Secretariat has been established since 2002 in Copenhagen, Denmark, which develops the international GBIF portal and assists members by coordinating and supporting activities, which are focussed on four program areas: Data Access and Database Interoperability (DADI), Digitisation of Natural History Collection Data (DIGIT), Electronic Catalogue of Names of Known Organisms (ECAT), and Outreach and Capacity Building (OCB). - For the national contribution to GBIF, seven data nodes have been established at different research institutions in Germany with support from the Federal Government (BMBF), which are responsible for different groups of organisms: 1. Insects (Evertebrata 1) at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart; 2. Terrestrial invertebrates (Evertebrata 2) at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich; 3. Marine invertebrates (Evertebrata 3) at Senckenberg Research Institute and Museum in Frankfurt; 4. Vertebrates at the Zoological Research Institute and Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn; 5. Plants (botany) at the Botanic Gardens and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem; 6. Fungi (mycology) at the Bavarian State Collection of Botany in Munich; 7. Microorganisms (Prokaryota) at the German National Resource Centre for Biological Material in Braunschweig. Different database systems currently in use at these differently oriented institutions for capturing specimen based information are briefly introduced.

Keywords

Biodiversity information, international cooperation, internet, database, collection data, GBIF node.