Celebrate World Oceans Day

Happy World Oceans Day from EOL!

Celebrate oceans today by getting to know EOL collaborators around the world working on diverse marine research projects  -  

Students from the Marine Biodiversity and Conservation SEA semester program will be sharing data collected during their voyage with EOL via several of our marine content partners. Follow their progress via blog posts from the high seas. 

 We also look forward to welcoming the Plankton Chronicles video and photo gallery as a content partner, courtesy of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and EOL Rubenstein Fellow Christian Sardet. The Plankton Chronicles project reveals the beauty and diversity of planktonic organisms. It is done in the context of the Tara Ocean expedition and the Villefranche sur Mer Marine Station. The schooner Tara recently completed her 30 months long exploration of plankton and returned to port in France. Her crew collected plankton  in 150 well characterized locations for analysis using imaging and genomics. It yielded a trove of photographs and footage of marine life from all around the world.

Finally, get to know Sedna IV, an oceanographic schooner. On April 18, 2012, the Sedna IV, in partnership with the Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, set off on one of the most important scientific and filmmaking expeditions of modern times: 1000 Days for the Planet. The crew of mariners, scientists, and filmmakers are sailing around the world to reveal our planet’s extraordinary beauty, to understand how our ecosystems work, and to ponder the great conservation challenges that face us all.

Read how the Sedna IV crew is celebrating World Ocean Day, and look forward to French-language species descriptions on EOL from members of the team. 

News: Biodiversity art show opening at Chicago’s Field Museum May 22 - International Day of Biodiversity

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, May 21, 2012 - “Nature’s Toolbox: Biodiversity, Art,
and Invention,” a new traveling contemporary art exhibition, opens at Chicago’s Field Museum May 22. Harnessing technology and inspired by nature’s amazing design
concepts, the show’s innovative, eye-capturing art helps visitors understand and
appreciate the life-or-death interdependence between the 10-20 million species on earth – including humans – and the quality of the environment we share.

“Many people still don’t realize how much our very lives depend on the
biodiversity of plants, animals, and everything else,” says Randy Jayne Rosenberg, Curator of the show and Executive Director of Art Works For Change, which developed and manages it. Indeed, some ecologists predict that half of all mammals and birds could be extinct within the next century, with similar losses in plants, marine life, and other species – entire ecosystems, in fact. Each loss carries with it lost benefits to human well-being because of the key roles these species play in providing such things as clean air and water, pollination, and climate regulation.

The purpose of the exhibition is to show that humans aren’t just part of the
problem but also the solution: by harnessing nature’s most brilliant ideas, we can improve the quality of human life while living in harmony with nature.
In “Nature’s Toolbox”, which features artworks from artists around the world
across a wide range of media, Rosenberg asked artists to use nature’s wisdom as the inspiration for new artworks. “They explored its genius and found opportunities for invention by employing the lessons nature offers,” she says. “We learn, for example, how by mimicking nature we can harness energy from algae, create fabric with the strength of a spider’s web, self-medicate like a chimp, create amphibian cities with the structure of a lilypad, and build walls made from sugar.”

The show brings viewers a fresh perspective on the relationship between everyday activities and biodiversity, such as Donna Ozawa’s Waribashi Project, an impressive display constructed of 90,000 waribashi, or disposable chopsticks. Every year hundreds of billions of waribashi are thrown away after just a single use, contributing to deforestation, one of the largest contributors to the loss of species.

Unique works such as Green Porno, a series of short films by actress Isabella
Rossellini on animal sexual behaviors, offer fascinating scientific insight along with a big dose of humor. The exhibition also features Charles Lee’s Dissipative System, a wall of touchable tiles that change color in response to heat – mimicking the color, humidity, and temperature changes in the exoskeleton of a Hercules beetle.

Awareness is the first critical step in changing our individual and collective
outlook from one that exploits nature to one that nurtures it, points out Rosenberg. Art builds awareness by helping us visualize our complex relationship to the natural world.

“Science provides facts while art tells stories,” she says, adding. “The need for
environmental stories has never been greater – people are hungry for positive images of the future. The stories at the heart of ‘Nature’s Toolbox’ offer fresh solutions, making it clear that humanity is itself an essential piece of this system. By understanding the relationships, not only can we save nature, we can save ourselves, too.”

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Entrance to “Nature’s Toolbox” is free with basic admission to The Field Museum. For
further information, visit fieldmuseum.org or www.artworksforchange.org.
Art Works for Change produces traveling contemporary art exhibitions that address
social and environmental issues. It applies the transformative power of art to promote
awareness, inspire action and provoke dialogue. The exhibitions serve as catalyst and crucible where artists, museums, advocacy organizations, and the local community can unite in common cause. Art Works for Change is a 501c3 charitable corporation.

EOL Announces Open Access Support Project with Pensoft Publishers

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) and Pensoft Publishers are pleased to announce a new collaboration that will increase the flow of new species descriptions from scientists in developing countries into the Encyclopedia of Life and promote the open access publishing model in taxonomy.

Recap: EOL Global Content Summit on Barro Colorado Island, Panama

Last month EOL held an exciting meeting hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on Barro Colorado Island, Panama.  We gathered together content experts from most of EOL’s global partners — those organizations which have joined us in our mission to provide global access to knowledge about life on earth.

National projects like Naturalis and Atlas of Living Australia were joined by international projects like Biodiversity Heritage Library, ViBRANT, and GBIF. Some participants joined us for the first time, such as the von Humboldt Research Institute from Colombia, SIAMAZONIA from Peru, and the Western Ghats Portal from India.  

Altogether, we comprised 14 nationalities from four continents, and at least 12 different projects.  We came armed with status reports and orientation slideshows about our own activities and left with draft strategies for working together. 

We also formed the “informatics paparazzi” and blinded** the native flora and fauna with our flash photography.  Images are starting to find their way to EOL, where we have also started some collections of what we saw.

Read more about the summit experience and our Global Partners.

**Editor’s Note: No Actual Blindings Took Place.

Read More

Welcome: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

EOL welcomes our newest content partner, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh!

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) was founded in the 17th century as a physic garden. Now it extends over four Gardens boasting a rich living collection of plants, and is a world-renowned centre for plant science and education. (link)

We are delighted they have chosen to share some of their holdings with the world through EOL.  Check out their Rhododendron illustrations and their giant collection of botanical type specimens.

Many thanks to 2011 Rubenstein Fellow Roger Hyam for his work to make this partnership possible.

(Photo by Steve Nova)

Biodiversity on the Move - An Article by Ari Daniel Shapiro from APM

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Ari Daniel Shapiro from Atlantic Public Media (APM), a non-profit public media organization in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. APM was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation. We’re excited to showcase how Atlantic Public Media has weaved Google Earth and KML tours into engaging stories about the diversity of life.

Life gets around. Tiny Arctic Terns soar from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and back, in a single year. A kind of sea algae known as “sea grapes” roam from Australia to the Mediterranean as stowaways, and then promptly conquer their new home.

As a radio producer, I’m used to telling these kinds of stories with audio, weaving together interview tape, ambient sound, and narration. For the last two years, I’ve worked with Atlantic Public Media and the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) to produce an audio series entitled One Species at a Time. Each episode pays homage to a different organism that gallops or creeps or pulses on our planet. We collaborate on these stories with Marie Studer, the EOL’s Learning and Education Director, who has championed our podcast as way to make the natural world come alive and generate excitement amongst people who want to learn about it and explore.

While our podcast and public radio programming brought these tales of the natural world to listeners all over the planet, we always look for ways to tell these stories better and share them more widely. Eduardo Garcia Milagros, a biologist and KML developer in Spain, approached us last year with the idea to use Google Earth as a platform for these mini-documentaries. Brimming with enthusiasm, he shared “When I first opened Google Earth, I went to see my hometown. Once I started exploring KML capabilities, I realized that Google Earth can be an amazing educational tool, especially when you have a good story.” Inspired by his excitement, we decided to identify species whose stories could really be best illustrated through a map, such as the Arctic Tern’s annual migration.

Caption: Our tour on Arctic terns can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded and explored in Google Earth.

Incorporating Google Earth into our narratives proved to be an interesting challenge for me and Jay Allison, my editor on the project and the Executive Director of APM. We wanted to make the most of the map as a medium to bring to life the tale of the Arctic Tern and other species for viewers. By integrating geographic animation and imagery from all over the world with the audio and images from contributing scientists, we were able to support and enhance the story. For example, in the sea algae tour below, we circle the globe to the Amazon rainforest to illustrate a phenomenon in the ecology of the Mediterranean.

Caption: Our sea algae tour can also be found on YouTube or downloaded for viewing in Google Earth.

These tours combine voice, sound, images, video, and data-driven animations to explain how two creatures have been able to travel so much of our planet. Coming from a public radio documentary background, we tend to approach things from a purely narrative or poetic angle, but Google Earth tours allow for audio/visual dialogue as well. The movement isn’t purely in the story. The map can become part of a “conversation,” and we’re just beginning to explore the possibilities.

We hope to produce more of these Biodiversity on the Move tours in the future; we’d like to hear what you think of them and what we can improve next time. Drop us a line here on the EOL Blog.

Posted by Ari Daniel Shapiro, Atlantic Public Media and the Encyclopedia of Life