A new initiative by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) offers 100 million mapped records of nearly every living species in the U.S. Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) provides specific locations for the vast majority of records, not just county or state records.
“The USGS is proud to announce this monumental resource,” said Kevin Gallagher, Associate Director of USGS Core Science Systems, “and this is a testament to the power of combining the efforts of hundreds of thousands of professional and citizen scientists into a resource that uses Big Data and Open Data principles to deliver biodiversity information for sustaining the Nation’s environmental capital.”
Anticipated users of BISON include researchers, land managers, water resource managers, educators, citizen scientists, and others.
USGS is collaborating with other federal agencies to increase the data set. In addition, hundreds of thousands of researchers and citizen scientists have contributed data.
Access BISON at http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/.