<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><a name="13dfb32d8e751553_13dfb31e7a1d80d8_13dfa7"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">TDWG Colleagues:</span></a></p><p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white">
<a name="13dfb32d8e751553_13dfb31e7a1d80d8_13dfa7"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"><br></span></a></p><p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><a name="13dfb32d8e751553_13dfb31e7a1d80d8_13dfa7"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">The BISON project builds on GBIF and other data to provide a species mapping application using the Darwin Core standard. BISON launched today.</span></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><a name="13dfb32d8e751553_13dfb31e7a1d80d8_13dfa7"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"><br></span></a></p><p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white">
<a name="13dfb32d8e751553_13dfb31e7a1d80d8_13dfa7"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">This information is available
online at: </span></a><a href="http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3566&from=rss_home"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3566&from=rss_home</span></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Project
URL: </span><a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov</span></a><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc">Discovering Species</span></b><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc"> </span></b><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#4f81bd">- </span></b><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc">Just a Click Away</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222"></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><i><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">The USGS makes finding
the locations (and more) of U.S. species a lot easier with the new digital
resource – BISON</span></i><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222"></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">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. </span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">“The USGS is proud to
announce this monumental resource”, said Kevin Gallagher, Associate
Director, </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc">Core
Science Systems</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">, “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."</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">“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 </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc">Encyclopedia
of Life</span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc"> </span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">explained. “This is highly
complementary and synergistic with EOL's efforts to raise awareness and
understanding of living nature.”</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">"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 </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc">NatureServe</span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">. “I am enthusiastic
about future opportunities to work with USGS to increase collaboration among
Federal, state and private data holders.”</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">BISON serves as the
U.S. Node of the </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc">Global
Biodiversity Information Facility</span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc"> </span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">(GBIF) and will form
an integral part of <span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="color:#1155cc">EcoINFORMA</span></span>,
the information delivery strategy in </span><a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast_sustaining_environmental_capital_report.pdf"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">"Sustaining Environmental
Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy,"</span></a><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222"> a recent report by
the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (</span><a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/pcast"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">PCAST</span></a><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">).</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-repeat:initial initial">"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."</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">The USGS has built and
maintains BISON, which is hosted on the massive Federal computing
infrastructure at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">To learn more, visit: </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc"><a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov">http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov</a></span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222"> or contact the USGS
BISON Team at </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc"><a href="mailto:BISON@usgs.gov">BISON@usgs.gov</a></span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222"></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">The USGS </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial">Core
Science Analytics and Synthesis program</span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">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.</span></p>
<p align="center" style="text-align:center;background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">**** </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#1155cc"><a href="http://www.usgs.gov/">http://www.usgs.gov/</a></span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222">****</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<div><b style="font-family:Times;font-weight:normal"><span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Annie Simpson</span><br><span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Eco-Science Synthesis, Core Science Systems</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">U.S. Geological Survey, MS 302</span><br><span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">12201 Sunrise Valley Drive</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Reston, Virginia 20192</span><br><span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">=================</span><br><span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><a href="mailto:asimpson@usgs.gov" target="_blank">asimpson@usgs.gov</a> </span><br>
<span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">703.648.4281 desk</span></b></div>