The first GBIF Demonstration Project, at GBIF Demo, provides concrete and user-friendly examples of how primary biodiversity data can effectively be used, managed, exchanged and disseminated via the Internet, for a wide public. It was prepared for GBIF by the University of Turku in association with the Institute of Amazonian Research (IIAP).

This project provides four tours that target decision-makers as well as the general public. Tour 1 deals with Neotropical species distributions, Tour 2 with multi-authored rainforest trees inventories, Tour 3 is about sub-arctic plant observations and Tour 4 focuses on planning and management of biodiversity.

The project presents concrete examples of the benefits of sharing and integrating biodiversity data from different sources and for different end users. Among others, the GBIF Demo Project tours provide examples of:

• Visualization of specimen and inventory data with map interfaces
• Assessment of specimen data versus intensity of collection effort
• Auxiliary maps and tools that interactively determine biogeographic patterns
• Satellite image mosaics that help assessing biological field data
• Species data can be considered in conjunction with other sorts of data (populations, infrastructure, etc.)
• Multi-author data storage solutions to prevent dormancy of data
• Visualization of biological information with helpful images
• Online queries and integration of data using DiGIR technologies
• How to conduct queries of biological literature using spatial criteria
• Integration of GBIF-related information into existing portals