NCEAS Working Groups
Synthesis of the biodiversity knowledge base: Towards a global database of terrestrial vertebrate distributions
Project Description
We propose a working group of ecologists, species experts and NGO representatives to establish a synthesis of global terrestrial vertebrate distributions. Distributions of vertebrates have been mapped by various authors and institutions at different taxonomic and geographic extent, resolution and accuracy. The amount of information and the techniques to handle large quantities of spatial data have now reached a level, which would allow data synthesis for this group at a global scale. The aims of the proposed working group are to facilitate accessibility of currently non-public datasets, to identify and act on filling the remaining gaps of distributional knowledge, and to analyze the resulting databases. The benefits are many-fold. The synthesis will enable standardized quantification of threat of extinction from small range size alone for all terrestrial vertebrates. It will boost efficiency of large-scale conservation priority setting by an unbiased identification of patterns of between-site complementarity in species representation. It will allow rapid assessment of vertebrate diversity of regions under threat of change. It will act as a coarse-resolution basis for deductive modeling of species' fine-scale distribution. Furthermore it will allow methodologically rigorous scrutiny of traditional hypotheses of determinants of species distributions and is likely to trigger significant advancement of the field of large-scale ecology. The proposed working group shall act as a base for both the necessary data synthesis and subsequent collaborative analysis and dissemination of the compiled data.
Principal Investigator(s)
Thomas Brooks
Project Dates
Start: July 16, 2001
End: February 7, 2002
completed
Participants
- Colin Bibby
- Birdlife International
- Luigi Boitani
- University of Rome
- Thomas Brooks
- Conservation International
- Fabio Corsi
- Istituto di Ecologia Applicata
- Darrel Frost
- American Museum of Natural History
- Mariano Gimenez-Dixon
- International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
- Walter Jetz
- University of Oxford
- Kate E. Jones
- University of Virginia
- John Lamoreux
- Yale University
- Pablo A. Marquet
- Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- Tom Moritz
- American Museum of Natural History
- John Morrison
- World Wildlife Fund
- Pam Rasmussen
- Michigan State University
- DeeAnn M. Reeder
- Boston University
- Anthony B. Rylands
- Conservation International
- Jan Schipper
- Wes Sechrest
- University of Virginia
- Wang Song
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Simon N. Stuart
- Unknown
- Peter Uetz
- University of Washington
- Richard Vogt
- Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Amazonas
- Paul Williams
- Natural History Museum, London
- Michael R. Willig
- National Science Foundation
- Crispen Wilson
- Conservation International
- Don E. Wilson
- Smithsonian Institution
- Xie Yan
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Bruce Young
- NatureServe/Association for Biodiversity Information
Products
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Book / 2004
A Global Species Assessment
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Presentations / 2001
Biological fingerprinting: Use of remote sensing for improved modelling and monitoring of biodiversity, December 2001
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Presentations / 2002
Biodiversity hotspots
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Presentations / 2002
Conservation science, strategy and tactics
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Report or White Paper / 2002
Report of the Second Meeting of the Mammal Subgroup of the Towards a Global Database of Terrestrial Vertebrate Distributions Working Group, 4-7 February 2002
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Journal Article / 2004
Coverage provided by the global protected-area system: Is it enough?
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Journal Article / 2003
Value of the IUCN Red List
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Book Chapter / 2005
Biodiversity
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Journal Article / 2004
Global gap analysis: Priority regions for expanding the global protected-area network
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Journal Article / 2006
The value of the IUCN Red List for conservation
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Journal Article / 2008
The status of the world's land and marine mammals: Diversity, threat, and knowledge