Biodiversity Informatics : A Silent Revolution for Management of Biological Diversity Data and Information

Biodiversity is generally categorized into genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity. As a part of the global initiative for conservation of biodiversity, floral, faunal and microbial diversity is to be documented providing detailed account of the species of all the countries and regions through an integrated and interactive information system. Such information system or Biodiversity Informatics helps in improved management, presentation, discovery, exploration and analysis of data and information on Biological Diversity.

Biodiversity data are grouped as Global data, Conservation areas data, Species data, Genetic data and Biological Reference Collections. Biodiversity Informatics and its activities may be utilised for different applications that include Forestry, Invasive alien species, Systematics and Evolutionary biology, Taxonomy and Identification systems. Further there must be development of new tools, services and standards for management and access of data.

There are many international efforts of generating and maintaining data on Biological Diversity. These are Bionet, Diversitas, Cenplank, Fishbase, Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Forests Resource Assessments (FRA), GOOS, GTOS, IOPI, Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), MIRCENS and SPECIES 2000, etc.

Many Global Biodiversity Information Centers are developed all around the world. Some of them are Bird Life International, Conservation International, FAO, International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, IUCN, UNEP, Wetland International, WCMC, etc. In India, an attempt to portray vegetation cover, fragmentation, disturbance and biological richness across the landscape is organized in the form of Biodiversity Information System (BIS) under the joint supervision of Department of Space and Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. Further, Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) have paved the way to map and analyze distribution of different biological resources. GIS based procedures can be successfully used for capturing spatial and environmental details on Biodiversity. At present there is a key trend to digitalize biodiversity data by collection, maintenance, and they are then distributed through user friendly Internet.