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Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=109819
Home> Pune> Page One Friday , December 10, 2004
CITY-BASED NCL PLAYS HOST TO TOP AMERICAN AND INDIAN SCIENTISTS TO CHART A MAP FOR CREATING ELECTRONIC CATALOGUE ON BIODIVERSITY
Imagine: life on the planet, a complete history on the web! Kartyk Venkataraman
Pune, December 9: IMAGINE a future where a global warning system alerts farmers on a possible invasion by crop-killing pests, an ecosystem is saved before a super-highway is constructed, an area is identified by forest officials as a wildlife sanctuary before it's too late.
And all this done by accessing a comprehensive, globally interoperable online electronic catalogue on biodiversity -- one that lists hundreds of thousands of flora and fauna species, geographically with complete data on each and every entry.
In a bid to convert this vision into reality and bring IT to the taxonomist (biodiversity researcher) the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) played host to an Indo-US joint international workshop on Biodiversity Informatics. Attended by 45 Indian and eight American delegates specialising in IT and biodiversity, as well as NCL scientists, the three-day meet, which ended on Thursday, looked at identifying various areas of collaboration.
John Mosesso, US Geological Survey (biological resources discipline), is upfront when he says it's a little too early to say a solution has been reached in collating the huge volumes of taxonomical information. ''Our data would be useful to experts in identifying endangered species and invasive ones.
''We are in the process of digitising information on biodiversity in North America and in other parts of the world. These three days in Pune has seen a lot of information and idea exchange,'' Mosesso told Pune Newsline. Though largely a scientific endeavour, Mosesso said some corporates were being involved in the US to create awareness.
His co-US delegate Michael Ruggiero, director, Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), USGS-Smithsonian Institution hit the nail on the head. ''It's been almost 200 years of naming species all over the world, but the data wasn't digitised. The same species are identified by different names in various parts of the world. Our's is a standard checklist for North American biodiversity, providing authoritative information.''
In India, the NCL Centre for Biodiversity Informatics (NCBI) has since 2001 put together a comprehensive website -- www.ncbi.org.in -- where the section on Indian fauna alone contains over 90,000 entries alongwith 48,000 synonyms and 15,078 common names. Apart from this are exhaustive entries on flora, fungi, viruses, microbes, threatened and invasive species.
Vishwas Chavan, scientist at NCL who is coordinating work at NCBI, says most of the data has been sourced from the Kolkata-based Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), as also from printed research papers.
''There is a lot of information, but it's locked up in cupboards all over the country. The challenge is to open these cupboards. This website would make biodiversity researchers' job much easier,'' he said.
[It's a longer article, but I can't seem to find the links... -FN]
