UT Natural Museum To Participate in Creating a Portal of Species Abundance Data

The Natural Museum of the University of Tartu will participate in the major all-European project EU BON (Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network), the aim of which is to create access to the abundance of data about biodiversity for scientists, managers and the public.

“The structure of data about biodiversity is really substantial and complex, as it contains taxonomical, morphological, genetic, biochemical, and other information about more than a million biological species. Moreover, the data also includes relations to the environment – the climate, place in which it grows, etc. The Natural Library runs the part of the project occupied with IT solutions for storing, editing and making such material accessible”, explained Urmas Kõljalg, Head of the UT Natural Library.

With the initiative by the Natural Museum, the unique eBiodiversity web portal has been created in Estonia. Today it collects 23,370 species of Estonian living nature into a single database. The eBiodiversity portal can be seen as a prototype of the system that is being developed.

The EU BON project has budget of nine million euros. It started in 2012 and will run until 2017. 30 establishments from Europe, Brazil, Israel and the Philippines are already participating. English-language information about the project can be found at www.eubon.eu.

Additional information: Urmas Kõljalg, director of the UT Natural Library, tel: 5341 2823, e-mail: urmas [dot] koljalg [ät] ut [dot] ee.