ATBI (All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory) Summary
Daniel Janzen
djanzen at MAIL.SAS.UPENN.EDU
Sun Jun 6 17:15:31 CDT 1993
1993
ATBI (All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory) 17 May 1993
by Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs, Department of Biology, University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Between now and 1 September 1993,
feedback, commentary, additions, etc. should be directed by FAX to these
two coordinators at INBio in Costa Rica (FAX 506-36-28-16). After 1
September, please use FAX 215-898-8780 at Penn or (better)
djanzen at mail.sas.upenn.edu. During May-August, hard copy should be sent by
airmail to Janzen & Hallwachs, INBio, 3100 Santo Domingo de Heredia,
Heredia, Costa Rica; after that date, to Janzen & Hallwachs at the above U.
of Penn. address. Comments received before 15 July 1993 will be the most
useful because they will be incorporated in the July final report.
---------------------------------
Highlights of the NSF-sponsored "All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory Workshop"
16-18 April 1993, Philadelphia
(see also Yoon, C. K. Science 260:620-622, 30 April 1993)
A group of 56 systematists, ecologists, inventoriers, and electronic
biodiversity information managers came to the following conclusions, among
others, during the workshop. By mid-July these conclusions and more will
be elaborated and developed into a detailed draft document that offers a
first draft generic battle plan for an All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory
(ATBI).
"We discover new dots of light in the night sky, yet do not know our own
planet. Our biostars wink out, never to reappear."
-Mike Ivie, 10:00 pm, 18 April 1993, Philadelphia.
---------------------------------
All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory or ATBI: to explore, lay trail, and
signpost an unknown earth for society.
- We recognize that natural biodiversity is our most valuable,
threatened, underdeveloped and ubiquitous living resource.
- Humanity has an urgent need and right to be informed about natural
biodiversity as to
- what it is (identification of all species and their placement in
higher taxa),
- where it is (location in the habitat and the landscape),
- what it does (natural history, inter-specific relationships,
community structure, and ecosystem function),
- how to care for it (biotic and abiotic requirements), and
- how to bring it to hand and mind (manage it, conserve it, and use
it without destroying it).
- We recognize and accept the concept that if we are to conserve wildland
biodiversity, we must use wildland biodiversity, and do so in some
sustainable and non-damaging manner, in full collaboration with local,
national and global processes.
- As members of the scientific community in general, and the systematics
community more specifically, we accept the responsibility of being major
contributors to the enterprise of understanding biodiversity.
- A major catalytic element toward achieving this understanding for the
world would be to focus on conducting a rapid, intensive inventory of all
the biodiversity of a few select, large and biodiverse sites.
- One All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory should be initiated as soon as
possible as a pilot project, with subsequent ATBIs to be initiated shortly
thereafter as lessons are learned, nations become ready for them, and the
taxonomic process has grown to where it can absorb what the work and
opportunity that they represent.
- An ATBI will yield a vast amount of information. As is the case with
taxonomy, this will require and stimulate growth and evolution of
information management along with the growth of the ATBI. This capability
is required by the dynamic knowledge base and management protocols that are
basic infrastructure for sustainable use of national and international
biological diversity. And this capability is especially required in the
biodiverse tropics.
- In countries where natural biodiversity has the potential to be a major
social element - which is the case in many developing countries - an ATBI
will represent a major point in common among many seemingly disparate
national development agendas, and be an opportunity for national synergisms
on a topic relatively free of traditional animosities.
- An ATBI is an unique opportunity to bring the biodiversity science
community into a dynamic mutualism with the rest of society, as well as
generate a powerful synergism among the diverse elements of the
biodiversity science community itself.
- An ATBI is a substantially greater administrative, scientific and social
challenge than is the Human Genome Project, and should be substantially
more charismatic and controversial owing to an ATBI's potential to be many
things to an extremely diverse array of performers and users.
- An ATBI is integral to the specific articles and general philosophy of
the UNCED 1992 Biodiversity Convention, and is intended to be one of the
primary tools for bringing about the care and sustainable use of
biodiversity sought by the Biodiversity Convention.
---------------------------------
Creation of an ATBI will, for a nation and for the world community,
initiate and provide, among other things,
- large and diverse arrays of identified species and their natural
histories that will be of fundamental use for society-directed R & D on
numerous kinds of sustainable and non-damaging uses of biodiversity
throughout national and international society - ecosystem function,
ecotourism, land management, biodiversity prospecting, basic and
environmental education programs, policy reform, organisms for ex-situ
conservation, seed and innocula sources for the agroscape and
biotechnology, biological control agents for the traditional and novel
agroscape, pest control, ecosystem management, institutional development,
economic analyses, watershed management, environmental health indicators,
new potential domesticates, etc.
- a major source of local employment and vocational training opportunities
- a major opportunity to pragmatically address gender issues in R & D and
in biodiversity management
- the development of protocols for intellectual and financial integration
of local communities with biodiversity management and development
- further development of a local and national sense of identification with
biodiversity management and development through non-destructive use
- support for and reinforcement of the goals of GEF, UNDP, UNEP, the
Biodiversity Convention, Systematics 2000, BIONET, CABI, BIOLAT,
DIVERSITAS, WRI, WWF, TNC, IUCN and a multitude of other international
efforts in biodiversity R & D
- technologies and philosophies for the realization of the goals of the
aforementioned international efforts
- numerous opportunities for training professionals and paraprofessionals
in taxonomy, ecology, biodiversity inventory, multi-disciplinary project
management, biodiversity management, distribution of biodiversity
information to national and international society, cross-cultural personnel
management, information management, large project management,
communications, etc.
- information and actual education for all levels from grade school
through post-graduate training, both national and international, through
electronic communication and on-site field courses and workshops
- numerous opportunities for cross-tropical, as well as north-south,
biodiversity management and development liason and technology transfer
- methodologies for national wildland biodiversity custodianship; these
methodologies can support and make use of the full array of international
knowledge that is applicable to sustainable use of wildland biodiversity
- for the first time a thorough across-taxa deep knowledge of biodiversity
of many adjacent habitats and one or more adjacent ecosystems
- a demonstration of the relevance and utility to the world community,
both scientific and lay, of coming to understand the taxonomic diversity of
a large biodiverse wildland
- information management protocols and experiments for complex free-living
biological systems and especially for the information they generate, be it
in physical, intellectual, or electronic format, and be it in the field or
urbanized environment
- benchmarks and a known biodiversity universe against which to monitor
the impact of the anthropogenic biosphere changes that have been thrust
upon us and are ever-increasing in intensity and omnipresence (i.e., a tool
for measuring the health of life on Earth)
- benchmarks and a known biodiversity universe for time-dependent
ecological and evolutionary analyses of biodiversity
- benchmarks and a known biodiversity universe against which to calibrate
and test all kinds of sampling and monitoring methods, both for
biodiversity directly and for those things that interact with biodiversity
- a pilot project for the ATBIs, which will in turn collectively
constitute a world-level computer-based information network of deep and
site-specific biodiversity understanding
- a deep reference point for comparison with the multitude of extra-ATBI
biodiversity studies being done and to be done on selected taxa and
specific questions and circumstances across the Earth's surface
- a major block of biodiversity knowledge and organization for direct and
comparative use in similar habitats over tens of degrees of latitude and in
many other countries, owing to the wide geographic distribution of a very
large number of mainland tropical organisms
- a major pulse of information, specimens and rationale for the
development of a robust and fully functional world-level international
taxonomic network
- a major pulse of information and rationale for the development of a
robust and fully functional world-level international biodiversity
information management capability
- an enormous body of new knowledge of specific taxa, characters for
identification and analysis, microgeographic distributions, ecological
associations, and biological interactions for the international taxonomic
network in general and specifically for use in phylogenetic systematics
- numerous opportunities to examine and test general concepts of species
richness, species definitions, community composition, species packing,
herbivore loads, symbioses, microgeographic variation, genetic diversity
within and among taxa, etc.
- exceptional opportunities for the international community to come to
learn how to work with a specific national effort by building on national
strengths
- synergisms among R & D personnel associated with very different taxa and
biodiversity questions, with subsequent synergisms with users and a
plethora of other kinds of biologists
- methodologies and protocols -legislative/political, administrative and
scientific - for intense study of fragile and small ecosystems without
destroying them, methodologies and protocols that are essential for melding
biodiversity R & D with the world's conserved wildlands
---------------------------------
What is an ATBI?
- An ATBI is an intense inventory of all taxa to the species level to the
degree possible for five years in a single highly biodiverse and
permanently protected site of about 50,000 to 100,000 ha, followed by
on-going further inventory as needed by specific taxa, and followed by a
multitude of rapidly expanding in-depth basic and applied biodiversity R&D.
- Every higher taxon will be studied to the maximum extent possible but
some groups may not be fully inventoried to the species level in the five
year period, owing to a lack of taxonomic expertise in the groups or their
extreme resistance to speedy study.
- An ATBI is not a substitute for a global inventory, nor will a series of
ATBIs provide all the specimens and information needed for full
phylogenetic sytematics; ATBIs are, however, one of the major ways to move
in both directions. Complementory activities are national inventory of
taxa of special national importance, and international inventory of taxa of
special international importance.
- The site and ATBI process will be subject to a 2-year planning phase,
prior to the 5-year intensive action phase.
- The more information already known about the site and/or the species
that occur there, the more thoroughly the difficult and the poorly known
groups can be inventoried in the 5-year period.
- The more background information that can be gathered and organized for
the site, the more accurately, deeply, intricately and profitably can the
biodiversity information be stored, managed, analysed and manipulated for
the greatest number of users in the 5-year period.
- The location will be largely constituted of habitats that are relatively
free from ongoing anthropogenic disturbance, but some anthropogenic
habitats may be included for their pertinence to wildland biodiversity
management throughout the world and for the species present.
- The location should contain a drainage basin and its headwaters, cover
one or more ecosystems, and have a large diversity of habitats.
- All groups of organisms at all taxonomic levels would be collected,
documented, identified, sampled and preserved (as specimens and specimen
parts) to the maximum degree possible in the 5-year period, with continuity
in subsequent years as more taxonomic expertise becomes available.
- The bulk of the material collected will be housed nationally through an
INBio-like process, with synoptic material moving internationally to
optimize taxonomic processes.
- All inventory information about all groups, and all specimens, are to be
made intellectually, electronically and physically available to the world,
taking into consideration minimal restrictions necessary for conservation,
scientific processing, and intellectual property rights.
- The ATBI and its information-gathering and information-processing will
be, from the beginning, fully electronic and fully linked to the
world-level electronic information flow throughout society.
- The site and ATBI will have guaranteed long term and legislated
preservation status and a well-established legal and administrative
framework.
- The ATBI will be broadly accessible to society by a major transport system.
- An ATBI will anticipate a major positive interaction with visitors from
society at large as well as from the scientific community.
- An ATBI is a highly focused group effort by many systematists, other
kinds of biologists, information specialists, and biodiversity users
throughout society.
- An ATBI will receive economic, political and social support from
national and international institutions, programs and individuals.
- An ATBI will be administrated through a national INBio-like process or
institution (NGO or government), in collaboration and coordination with
national and international institutions, programs and individuals.
- An ATBI will have a steering committee whose representatives are at
least half drawn from the community of users of the information that will
be generated - ranging from very local to international.
- A specific ATBI will come about through a process of consensus building
among biodiversity biologists and the multiple users and affected persons
throughout national and international society, and remain sensitive to the
major elements of this equation throughout the first five years and
subsequent development.
- An ATBI 5-year cost will be between $50 million and $150 million.
- An ATBI 2-year planning and preparation process will cost between
$500,000 and $1 million per year.
- Overall cost will depend on the country of the ATBI, how thorough can be
the particular ATBI, and to what degree its taxonomic and phylogenetic
systematics costs are charged directly to it and to what degree they are
covered by a world-level taxonomic and electronic network and process that
will synergize with, and be supported by, biodiversity R & D projects
throughout the world.
- An ATBI will generate a political support base nationally and
internationally.
- An ATBI will generate a financial endowment that is adequate for basic
site maintenance processes after the 5-year period, both through explicit
fund-raising and through income earned by the ATBI itself as a tourist
attraction and as a source of commercially usable information (just as is
the case with universities).
---------------------------------
Information and knowledge management
An ATBI must acquire information in the inventory process that is of
mutual interest to diverse groups, and distribute its information in an
audience-specific manner to a great range of users, thereby providing an
opportunity for increased syntheses, multiple interdisciplinary activities,
and both novel and conventional users. Biodiversity information is
intrinsically highly particulate as well as highly networkable. This
information acquisition and distribution would be an impossible task
without fully taking advantage of all the electronic information management
capacity currently available, and stimulating and waiting for that which is
yet to come.
To accomplish the goals of an ATBI, it will be necessary to develop
and use a dynamic and electronic system of knowledge bases that are
- widely accessible to all sectors of society, with the caveat of filters
and gateways appropriate for conservation of vulnerable biodiversity ,
science quality, and intellectual property rights of secondary users,
- networked nationally and internationally with other biodiversity and
non-biodiversity information management systems and data bases that are
both on-site and off-site,
- ongoing and permanent electronic deposits of all information on
specimens and associated spatial and temporal distribution, and their
intrinsic and extrinsic traits acquired from the field and from the
literature,
- rich in processes for refining and developing techniques for data and
knowledge input, standardization, storage, analysis, output and
distribution, on-site and off-site, and
- rich in a diversity of analysis, outputs and feedback systems for
information in both traditional and novel formats for national and
international users.
---------------------------------
What is the future of an ATBI?
An ATBI is just the first step in a process of site-specific deep
knowledge acquisition into perpetuity, a continuation of all the processes
discussed here, both in ever-greater depth and in ever-expanding novelty,
novelty that is guided and inspired by intellectual and physical
synergisms. Among these future activities, though not necesssarily charged
to the ATBI budget projected above, will be
- long-term monitoring of a multitude of biological processes and their
interactions with the static and changing micro and macroenvironment; an
ATBI will be a generic Long Term Ecological Research site for many
different agendas, including those of biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics
- continued and iterative taxonomic work on each taxon, with emphasis
allocated by both difficulty and importance to society at large
- continued stimulation of the development of the network of ATBIs around
the globe, through serving as a pilot project and natural laboratory
- major input to the overall efforts to inventory and understand the
Earth's biodiversity
- on-going training and idea generation in wildland biodiversity management
in all senses, including traditional, nontraditional, and novel uses
- major demand for, and support to, the international taxonomic efforts and
expertise that are fundamental to biodiversity understanding and management
the world over
---------------------------------
What are the next steps to developing an ATBI?
- identify a site for the first and pilot project ATBI
- elicit support from an ATBI's national government
- elecit support from national society at large
- elicit support from biodiversity NGO's (national and international),
international development organizations, and other user groups
- elicit support from scientific societies and scientific interest groups
- elicit support from specific taxonomists
- seek financial support for the 2-year planning and preparation process
- seek financial support for the 5-year project
- assemble a dedicated working group of nationals and internationals to
develop a detailed proposal for the 5-year project
- do it
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