Biological Observations Project

About IOOS BDP

The objective of Biological Observations Data Project, (BDP) is to help develop an efficient and effective information infrastructure for biological observations databases, adding components and web links as necessary to serve customers/end-users.  The project is currently focused on a single case-study, and it’s designed to promote biological data standards and interoperability to help customers/end-users access observations from a wide variety of sources and formats. 

Databases in use have been developed by disparate organizations, institutions, and individuals for differing purposes, and result in databases with locally-specific structures, contents, methods, and policies. 

In addition, these data and applications are diverse and may change over time; as such, data from one source might contain different variables depending on when the data were collected.  These differences can make retrieving data across databases a time-consuming and ineffective process.  This project aims to improve access to data from these diverse sources.

The case study in focus is a reef fish population assessment. This assessment is used to establish reef fish Annual Catch Limits as defined by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act (MSRA).  The data were collected by scientists and managers at NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC). 

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The biological observations used for this project are species presence/absence/abundance and life history data for reef fishes in the Hawaiian Archipelago and other locations in the Pacific region. The data providers include NOAA PIFSC Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, National Park Service Pacific Island Network, and the NOAA Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The data include independent fishery surveys (diver-based reef fish observations) collected as part of each agency’s coral reef monitoring programs.

While a single user-group was identified in the Pacific region for this project, the results should be applicable more broadly to projects utilizing biological observations, and it should be portable to other geographies.

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Locations of the reef-areas (i.e., islands and atolls) surveyed by Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center / Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, PIFSC / CRED

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Project Details

System Concept and Schema/Terminology

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This project had adoped/adapted or had built the following data standards:

• Schema Terminology will be based on ratified Darwin core, Dublin core and proposed IOOS vocabularies. XML guide will also based on Darwin core XML guidance.
  
  
• CF Conventions had been applied to biological data definition at the field level. This is to assure that IOOS Biological Project will be compatible with other geophysical datasets.
  
  
• FGDC and ISO 19115-2 are the adopted Metadata standards.
  
  
• ERDDAP is the main webservice for this project.
  
  
• EDC is the client developed to connect directly to ERDDAP and access data using customer application tools such as ARCGIS and R Project.
  
  
• To learn more about the Biological data standards implemented at the Pacific Islands Region please follow the following links:
  Biological data services at the Pacific Islands Region website
  FGDC and ISO Metadata
  
  
• Access the IOOS Biological Data Terminology

Further information about the Biologigal Observations:

• MTS reference paper - Moustahfid et al. 2011
  Making United States Integrated Ocean Observing System (U.S. IOOS) Inclusive of Marine Biological Resources Ecosystems Observation, Oceans 11 MTS/IEEE Kona- September 2011 in Data Visualization and Access (110408-005

 

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Meetings and Workshops

For more information, please, visit the following WIKI.

Wiki space for Biological Data Project, IOOS BDP (Login required)
https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/confluence/display/ioosbdp/Home

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