April 2013 - tdwg - lists.tdwg.org

In Memoriam Dr Richard Pankhurst
by Mergen Patricia 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

Dear Colleagues, On behalf of TDWG we are very sorry to inform you that Richard John Pankhurst passed away on Tuesday 26 March after fighting oesophageal cancer for many years. He was a very important contributer and friend of TDWG, as can be judged from his short CV from the BioCISE directory: Dr Richard Pankhurst began his career in computing in the computer section at CERN, Geneva in 1963, and moving back to Cambridge to work on Computer-Aided Design in 1966. In 1971 he moved to the Botany School, Cambridge to begin work on his PANKEY programs for identification and key construction. This was continued at the Botany department of the Natural History Museum from 1974 until 1991, where he was for many years curator of the British herbarium, and also worked on the Flora Meso-Americana. "Biological Identification", 1978, was the first textbook on computer methods in identification. A new version of this book was published by C.U.P in 1991. Also published in that year was the Flora of the Outer Hebrides. With over 50 publications of refereed papers and books in the fields of taxonomic computing he has made major contributions to these fields. Dr. Pankhurst has been very active recently in programming and managing botanical databases (Flora Europaea, BSBI database and PANDORA) and systems with images. He was appointed Principal Scientific Officer at the RGB Edinburgh in 1991. Dr. Pankhurst served on various committees of British and international organizations, among others. Botanical Society of the British Isles, Committee for Scotland and Database Committee. Botanical Society of Scotland, Council. Taxonomic Databases Working Group, convener of Descriptors Group. International Organisation for Plant Information, co-convener of Information Systems Committee, Checklist Committee. Dr. Pankhurst was the head of the Department of Taxonomic Computing at RGBE. After his official retirement, he compiled a large database of the Rose family. His work on recording the wild flowers of the Outer Hebrides took him frequently to these remote islands on behalf of the Botanical Society of the British Isles. His interest in Taraxacum (dandelions) was acknowledged when a species found only on St. Kilda was named *Taraxacum pankhurstianum*. In Richard, not only a very important scientist was lost to our community, but also a very pleasant collaborator and friend . <patricia.mergen(a)africamuseum.be> Dr. Patricia Mergen (General Secretary of TDWG, on behalf of the Executive Committee) Head of Biodiversity Information and Cybertaxonomy Royal Museum for Central Africa Leuvensesteenweg 13 B-3080 Tervuren Belgium + 32 2 769 5 *626* patricia.mergen(a)africamuseum.be

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Infrageneric of Eragrostis
by Sami Rabei 20 Apr '13

20 Apr '13

Dear All Does any one has information about subdeneric of Eragrostis for the following species. Eragrostis cilianensis , Eragrostis minor , Eragrostis aegyptiaca , Eragrostis tenuifolia , Eragrostis tef , Eragrostis sarmentosa , Eragrostis barrelieri , Eragrostis pilosa Eragrostis aspera , Eragrostis ciliaris , Eragrostis japonica , Eragrostis lepida , Eragrostis tenella , Eragrostis tremula Thanks in advance sami ===== All the best. Sami Rabei http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GexZOhIAAAAJ Sincerely Yours ---------------------------------- With my Best Wishes Sami Hussein Rabei, Botany Department Faculty of Science, Damietta University, New Damietta , Post Box 34517 Damietta Egypt . Tel. Mobile: 002 0127 3601618 002 0101 7895350 Tel. Work: 002 057 2403981 Tel. Home: 002 057 2403108 Fax: 002 057 2403868

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USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) launches with 110+ species occurrences (and growing)
by Simpson, Annie 18 Apr '13

18 Apr '13

TDWG Colleagues: The BISON project builds on GBIF and other data to provide a species mapping application using the Darwin Core standard. BISON launched today. This information is available online at: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3566&from=rss_home Project URL: http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov *Discovering Species** **- **Just a Click Away* *The USGS makes finding the locations (and more) of U.S. species a lot easier with the new digital resource – BISON* Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation or BISON is the only system of its kind; a unique, web-based Federal resource for finding species in the U. S. and territories. Its size is unprecedented, offering more than 100 million mapped records of nearly every living species nationwide and growing. And the vast majority of the records are specific locations, not just county or state records. What’s more, BISON provides an “Area of Interest” search capability in which users can query by drawing the exact boundary around their area of interest, down to and including towns, villages, or even much smaller areas such as parks. For instance, New York City’s Central Park has more than 100,000 “species occurrences” recorded in BISON, with each species noted in detail. Other BISON search options include querying the species by scientific or common name, year range, state, county, basis of record, or provider institution. As for the results, BISON displays them in both an interactive map and a list format. Users can click on each species occurrence point to retrieve more information, such as the institution providing the data, the collector, the date collected, and whether it was from a collection or an observation. Further, occurrences can be dynamically visualized with more than 50 other layers of environmental information in the system. Extensive web services are also available for direct connections to other systems. “The USGS is proud to announce this monumental resource”, said Kevin Gallagher, Associate Director, Core Science Systems, “and this is a testament to the power of combining the efforts of hundreds of thousands of professional and citizen scientists into a resource that uses Big Data and Open Data principles to deliver biodiversity information for sustaining the Nation’s environmental capital." “BISON is destined to become an indispensable toolkit to manage species occurrence data to support scientific, educational, and policy-making activities in the US”, Dr. Erick Mata, Executive Director of the Encyclopedia of Life explained. “This is highly complementary and synergistic with EOL's efforts to raise awareness and understanding of living nature.” "With BISON, the USGS takes a big step toward making biodiversity data held within Federal agencies easier to find and use”, added Mary Klein, President & CEO of NatureServe. “I am enthusiastic about future opportunities to work with USGS to increase collaboration among Federal, state and private data holders.” USGS Core Science Systems Mission Area, which developed the resource, expects that BISON users will be broad-based and include land managers, researchers, refuge managers, citizen scientists, agriculture professionals, fisheries managers, water resource managers, educators, and more. Land managers, for instance, might be looking for a piece of land to purchase for conservation—but first they want to know what species have been documented for that parcel. BISON will tell them after only a few mouse clicks. BISON serves as the U.S. Node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and will form an integral part of EcoINFORMA, the information delivery strategy in "Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy,"<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast_sustain…>a recent report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST <http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/pcast> ). "BISON responds directly to a key need PCAST pointed out in ‘Sustaining Environmental Capital’ -- to make Federal environmental data available, inter-operable, and usable to the public," said PCAST member Rosina Bierbaum, "We look forward to this 'biodiversity' hub being supplemented by complementary ecological data hubs by other Federal partners, to further the goal of helping communities across the Nation make increasingly wise planning and management decisions." BISON already includes millions of points from the Federal investment in biodiversity research. It is formally cooperating with other Federal agencies to greatly expand the delivery of federally funded biodiversity data for the greatest possible good. Hundreds of thousands of citizen and professional scientists have collected the data in BISON. Non-governmental organizations, state and local governments, universities, and many others are also participating in this enormous undertaking. The USGS has built and maintains BISON, which is hosted on the massive Federal computing infrastructure at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. To learn more, visit: http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov or contact the USGS BISON Team at BISON(a)usgs.gov The USGS Core Science Analytics and Synthesis program within Core Science Systems is home to BISON and focuses on innovative ways to manage and deliver scientific data and information. The program implements and promotes standards and best practices to enable efficient, data-driven science for decision-making that supports a rapid response to emerging natural resource issues. One of the ways this is accomplished is by developing national data products that increase our understanding of the Earth’s natural systems. **** http://www.usgs.gov/**** *Annie Simpson Eco-Science Synthesis, Core Science Systems U.S. Geological Survey, MS 302 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, Virginia 20192 ================= asimpson(a)usgs.gov 703.648.4281 desk*

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NISO/DCMI webinar: Deployment of RDA Cataloging and its Expression as Linked Data
by DCMI Announce 08 Apr '13

08 Apr '13

******************Please excuse the cross postings****************** Join NISO/DCMI for our joint April webinar --Webinar: Deployment of RDA (Resource Description and Access) Cataloging and its Expression as Linked Data --Date: April 24, 2013 --Time: 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time - UTC 17:00:00) (World Clock: http://bit.ly/XySJt0) --Event webpage: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/dcmi/rda/ ========================================================================= ABOUT THE WEBINAR: A seminar at the British Library in April 2012 marked the fifth anniversary of a 2007 meeting at which representatives of the Dublin Core, Semantic Web, and RDA communities jointly recommended that the then-draft cataloging standard RDA be provided in the form of vocabularies and application profiles usable for Linked Data. One year after this anniversary meeting and one year closer to the general deployment of RDA in libraries, this webinar will take stock of progress towards developing application profiles based on RDA and discuss the practicalities of exposing RDA-based data in the Linked Data cloud. SPEAKER: Alan Danskin, Metadata Standards Manager at The British Library, where he has worked in various capacities since 1987, including implementation of MARC 21. He currently represents the library on the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (Resource Description and Access) for which he until recently served as chair. He has served as chair of the Cataloguing & Indexing Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and is a member of the Book Industry Communication Bibliographic Standards Group. Registration closes one hour before the webinar begins. For more information and to register, visit the event webpage: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/dcmi/rda/

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