A global open-access data and information clearing-house on marine biodiversity for science, conservation, and sustainable development.
OCEAN BIOdiversity INFORMATION SYSTEM
About OBIS :
More than 20 OBIS nodes around the world connect 500 institutions from 56 countries. Collectively, they have provided over 45 million observations of nearly 120 000 marine species, from Bacteria to Whales, from the surface to 10 900 meters depth, and from the Tropics to the Poles. The datasets are integrated so you can search and map them all seamlessly by species name, higher taxonomic level, geographic area, depth, time and environmental parameters. OBIS emanates from the Census of Marine Life (2000-2010) and was adopted as a project under IOC-UNESCO’s International Oceanographic Data and Information (IODE) programme in 2009.
About EurOBIS (European Ocean Biodiversity information system) :
EurOBIs was established in 2004 with an aim at centralising and making available the marine species biogeographic data in Europe. It was developed by VLIZ within the framework of MarBEF (MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning) and brings together biogeographic data collected within European marine waters, or by European researchers and institutes outside Europe. The main focus is taxonomy and distribution records in space and time.
Similar to what happens with other regional nodes, EurOBIS data flow to the global initiative Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) and eventually become available via the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), hosting global marine and terrestrial distribution data.
From 2009 EurOBIS became the backbone of EMODnet Biology which allowed the flow of EurOBIs data through its portal. In 2014 it became part of the central Species Information Backbone of LifeWatch, which aims at standardizing species data and integrating the distributed biodiversity data and taxonomic repositories and operating facilities as well as filling the gaps in our knowledge. The EurOBIS team is supported by LifeWatch Belgium, part of the European LifeWatch E-Science Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research.
Type: virtual/e-infrastructure
Launched in : 2002 (OBIS), 2004 (EurOBIS)
Access & costs: Free online access
Websites:
- OBIS: https://obis.org
- EurOBIS: www.eurobis.org
Contacts for EurOBIS:
- General email - info@eurobis.org
- Leen Vandepitte, VLIZ - leen.vandepitte@vliz.be
- Joana Beja, VLIZ - joana.beja@vliz.be