Slashdot Mirror
Open Species Database Breaks Half-Million Mark
ferienhausversicherung writes "Biologists estimate that about 1.75 million species, from bacteria to blue whales, have already been identified on Earth. But there may be anywhere between 3 million and 12 million more yet to be discovered. An online catalogue of all known life on Earth now has half a million species in its freely available database. Another promising effort is Wikispecies. Started in August 2004, this is an offshoot of the Wikimedia group, whose free online encyclopaedia is constructed by users themselves." (And Wikipedia itself is about to publish its 500,000th English entry -- if you hurry, perhaps it will be yours.)
A terrestrial ecoregion map of the Earth is available from the National Geographic Society and WWF - United States as their "terrestrial ecoregion map" showing the 8 terrestrial ecozones. According to WWF-US this is "a project which involves describing, mapping and photographically representing 867 Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World. These ecoregions are divided based upon geography, climate, soils, and vegetation... technical descriptions, species lists, educational excerpts, and photographic depictions of each ecoregion... for educational purposes only."
e coregion+map.
Understanding most environmental security problems requires some base map. Unfortunately these maps are not available generally in digital map form, which is one reason a digital ecoregion map standard is required.
There is a digital map petition urging the publishers to make the material available electronically under Creative-Commons by-nc-sa. This helps those interested in helping preserve the 238 Global 200 priority ecoregions and complements WWF's own plans: "Every school in the United States will be sent 10 ecoregion maps and teachers guides to get students interested in visiting the web page. Each ecoregion page will include educational descriptions highlighting important biodiversity features of the ecoregion and a summary of the conservation situation. The technical descriptions detail the biology and status of each ecoregion. There also will be one or more photographs depicting the natural habitat of each ecoregion. It has been a Herculean task to gather photographs of natural habitats of the world. We could not have accomplished as much as we have without your willingness to contribute your images." - David M. Olson, Ph.D., Director, Conservation Science Program, World Wildlife Fund US, email: david.olson wwfus org.
Current the WWF-US seeks only "a) the right to publish the photographs on the World Wide Web as part of the Wild World educational web site created by WWF in association with National Geographic Society, underwritten by Ford Motor Company; b) The right to crop and otherwise alter and edit the photographs, as WWF deems appropriate, to fit space or to enhance the function or effectiveness of use of the photographs."
This comment is licensed under CC-by-nc-sa 2.0 - see http://www.livingplatform.ca/tiki-index.php?page=