1) OBIS aims to make biogeographic data freely available to support ocean management and conservation. 2) It has grown from 1 staff member in 2001 to include hundreds of contributing partners by 2012. 3) The number of species, datasets, and records in OBIS has increased dramatically over time but significant data gaps still remain, especially in understudied areas like the deep sea.

1. Introduction to
OBIS
Ward Appeltans
IOC/UNESCO
iMarine-VLIZ-OBIS Meeting, 28 Augustus 2012 - Oostende

2. VISION
We make biogeographic data from all over the world
freely available to policy makers, environmental
managers, researchers and the public at large, in order
to increase our knowledge to better manage and protect
our oceans.

3. History in a nutshell
Marine spp Datasets Records (M)
1997 1st COML workshop – OBIS concept
1999 Preparatory workshop Washington
2000 OBIS launched, funding Sloan and NSF
2001 1st Int. Comm. Meeting, M.J. Costello chair,
1 staff member (Ph. Zhang)
2002 1st OBIS node (OBIS-SEAMAP)
2004 40,000 38 5.6
2006 75,000 153 10.3
2007 E. Vanden Berghe director, 2-3 staff at Rutgers 79,000 206 13.1
2008 13 OBIS nodes 104,000 492 16.4
2009 OBIS part of UNESCO-IOC/IODE 108,000 725 22.1
2010 Launch new data portal 114,000 912 30.7
2011 Database servers hosted by VLIZ (Ostend) 118,000 1,056 32.3
2012 W. Appeltans manager at IODE (Ostend) 119,000 1,125 33.6

4. Dots are projects
OBIS Network
OBIS is a
strategic
alliance of
hundreds of
scientists and
organisations
who contribute
data,
information
and expertise
to OBIS.

5. Questionaire by EuroMarine in 2012
Results: among 48 data systems (based on 360
reponses –18% response rate), OBIS is listed in the:
– Top 5 best-known data systems
– Top 10 best searched and downloaded systems
– Top 10 systems were people have contributed data to
– Top 10 most consulted systems on a monthly basis
LINK to report

6. Funding resources for the OBIS
Secretariat
• Current:
– European Commission
• iMarine EU FP7 project
– UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
(UNESCO-IOC)
• IOC Member States: Flanders, Brazil, Canada, USA, Australia
• Past:
– Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
– Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
– National Science Foundation (NSF)
– European Commisson (EMODNET)
– National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP)
– National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

7. Data System Architecture
portal Queries GBIF GEO
Mapping
production Extraction EOL iMarine
LifeWatch
GCMD staging
WoRMS
marbound ITIS, CoL, IRMNG
WOD/ODP
assembly
GEBCO
node node node
-Excel, DiGIR, IPT
-OBIS (extended DwC) schema

8. Association of observation points
with oceanography
Observation data associated with
Environmental attributes from World Ocean Atlas  Bottom depth
 Temperature
 Salinity
 Nitrogen / Oxygen
 Phosphate / Silicate
Visualized through interactive graphs
 Time-series graphs
 Histograms
WOA09, http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOA09/pr_woa09.html

9. OBIS allows extraction of observations
based on environmental conditions
Example map #1
Cetacean species observations in LME region
‘Celtic-Biscay Shelf’
(no environmental conditions set)
Example map #2
Cetacean species observations in LME region
‘Celtic-Biscay Shelf’ filtered by a temperature
range of 13 to 15 degrees

10. Summary stats: very little historical
data

11. Summary stats: number of records
and species per year

12. Summary stats: growth of data in
OBIS
#spp *100
#datasets # distribution records

13. Summary stats: it is becoming more
difficult to add more species to OBIS

14. Summary stats: it is becoming more
difficult to add more species to OBIS
(1950-2005)
species
records

15. Number of species observed in OBIS
and described as new in WoRMS

16. The Unknown Ocean: A slice
Red = many records, dark blue none
Coastal areas > open waters;
Surface areas > the deep sea;
Vertebrates and other large animals > smaller invertebrates;
Northern hemisphere > southern.
The vast midwaters,
Earth’s largest
habitat by volume,
mostly unexplored
(~95%)
Source: CoML OBIS
Webb, O’Dor, Vanden Berghe

17. OBIS assists in identifying global patterns
in the distribution of biodiversity
(a) Total records in OBIS, corrected for the difference in surface area
between squares on different latitude; (b) total number of species, corrected
for surface area; (c) Shannon Index; (d) Hurlbert’s index, es(50)

18. An altered ocean: changes in composition and
abundance (90% declines in some groups)
1950s
1980s
2007
McClenachen (2009) Cons. Biol.

19. CBD-COP10 listed OBIS as a key source of
information for the identification of Ecologically or
Biologically Significant Areas (EBSAs) part of CBD
Areas of special importance
for the life history of a
Areas of significant naturalness
Areas of high biodiversity
species
Areas of
uniqueness or rarity

20. OBIS feeds models of species
distributions and species richness
‘Aquamaps’ uses environmental envelope
modelling to extrapolate species distributions
beyond the actual observations
(www.aquamaps.org)

21. Many research papers are based on
OBIS data

22. Social media

23. IMarine
• iMarine is a new EU project to establish a global e-
infrastructure to share data & knowledge for
sustainable fisheries management and conservation
policies. In iMarine, IOC/OBIS coordinates the
biodiversity cluster and is involved in the creation of a
Community of Practice.
http://www.i-marine.eu
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24. OBIS’ role in iMarine
Efforts:
•WP3 (18 person months)
– setting up an Ecosystem Approach Community of Practice (EA-
CoP) through:
• iMarine Board meetings, data and metadata harmonisation and
standardisation
• Business Cases/Clusters (e.g. Biodiversity)
•WP6 (6 person months)
– Virtual Research Environments Deployment and Operation

26. Set Operations – Algebraic Operations
Occurrence Data from GBIF Occurrence Data from WoRMS
Occurrence Data from OBIS
∩ ᴜ -
Intersection Union Difference
A Data Set centric view will be adopted

27. Advantage for OBIS
• Data analysis:
– Scientists (or group of scientists) can set up a Virtual
Research Environment
– Access to many data sources, statistical and geospatial
tools
• Policy level:
– Supporting establishment of VMEs and EBSAs
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28. Advantage for OBIS
• Data quality and enrichment
– QC tools
– Identify outliers
– Gap analysis
– Taxon name reconciliation
– Environmental envelopes
• Export tools, OGC-webservices
• Man- and computing power
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