biology

National Biological Information Infrastructure

National Biological Information Infrastructure is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand National Biological Information Infrastructure rather than just read about it. In short: The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) was a program coordinated by the United States Geological Survey's Biological Informatics Office within the USGS Biological Resources Discipline. Its purpose was to facilitate access to data and information on the biological resources of the United States, utilizing government agencies, academic institutions, non-government organizations, and private industry.

Key takeaways

National Biological Information Infrastructure belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect National Biological Information Infrastructure to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of National Biological Information Infrastructure from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) was a program coordinated by the United States Geological Survey's Biological Informatics Office within the USGS Biological Resources Discipline. Its purpose was to facilitate access to data and information on the biological resources of the United States, utilizing government agencies, academic institutions, non-government organizations, and private industry. It was terminated 15 January 2012. The NBII coordinated the research output of the biological community into information systems that were easily accessed, by providing organization and a structure that was based on standards. The structure was essentially invisible to the end user of the information, but was vitally important to those wishing to participate by making data available through the system, or those who wished to become partners in the development of new tools, models, and applications. The end-user aspect of the NBII was its Web portal which provided access to information, publications, and data from the various data sources "in a seamless, unified portal."

History The NBII was an outgrowth of a 1993 National Research Council report titled "A Biological Survey for the Nation", which recommended that the United States Department of the Interior oversee the development of a National Biotic Resource Information System to coordinate information about biodiversity and ecosystems. The report found that such information was "vital to a wide range of scientific, educational, and government uses," but that, unfortunately, most of the information existed in forms that were not easily used. It envisioned a system of distributed databases designed to make the existing information more accessible. The report also suggested that new ways to collect and distribute data and information should be developed. It did mention networking, but not the Internet. . As a first step, in 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12906, "Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: the National Spatial Data Infrastructure". National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) dealt with the acquisition, processing, storage, and distribution of geospatial (geographically referenced) data. In conjunction with this, but without a presidential order, former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt renamed the national biotic resource information system as the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). In 1996 the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-130, the document which directs the management of federal information resources in the United States, was amended to include the NBII. Funding and support for the NBII did not develop as quickly as the scientific community hoped, and in 1998, the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report "Teaming With Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America's Living Capital" which urged that current information technology be applied to the management of science information, and reiterated the findings of the 1993 report. In 2001 money was finally appropriated for the development of the system of NBII networked nodes, though far below the level recommended in the report. In implementing this system, the USGS designed each aspect of the system to focus on a narrow scope (often geographic) or purpose. For example, the Southwest Information Node focused on desert ecosystems.

International Initiatives The NBII was involved with a range of international initiatives including:

"Global Biodiversity Information Facility" (GBIF) "Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network" (IABIN) "Invasive Species Information Network for the Americas" (I3N) "Pollinators Thematic Network: A Network for Pollinator Information and Expertise in the Western Hemisphere" (PTN), primarily an IABIN initiative. "Global Invasive Species Information Network" "FishBase for the Americas: Improving Access to Western Hemisphere Fisheries" is a partnership of FishBase, the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN) and the NBII Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (FAR) Node.

Reviews Early on researchers found the NBII coordination less than expected. The NBII navigation buttons on the Invasive Species databases had confusing topic labels especially when compared with the National Agricultural Library labels. The switching back and forth between the portal and the databases was "a tedious exercise indeed." Nonetheless, the Federation of Government Information Processing Councils awarded the NBII a 2002 Award for Outstanding Intergovernmental Technology Solutions. Due to the extensive amount and array of resources and data available, users often needed to both browse and search to locate specific information of interest. "A great deal of persistence may be required to find a particular database. Some valuable resources are found four or five layers into the site's hierarchy." An example of this excessive hierarchy was FRAMES, the "Fire Research And Management Exchange System" portal to U.S.-based Internet resources on forest and wildland fires. Other problems included resources that were listed well down on a long page, so that they did not appear on the screen, and there were the occasional dead links. "

Termination and storage In the President's Budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the NBII was identified as one of over 200 programs slated for termination or reduction. The FY 2011 Continuing Resolution for USGS, finalized in May 2011, accelerated the beginning of the termination activities to FY 2011 with their completion in FY 2012. On October 3, 2011, USGS announced on all NBII websites and applications that on 15 January 2012, the NBII website and any applications residing on the nbii.gov domain would be shut down, and it was. Before that shutdown, the Library of Congress, Internet Archive and Stanford Libraries all independently harvested the data from the NBII Website. Stanford Libraries harvested the site twice between January 5 and January 13, 2012 for storage in its Fugitive US Agencies collection. Data and metadata from the Mid Atlantic Information Node (MAIN), Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Node (FAR), and the Bird Node which were hosted by Penn State University (https://www.nacse.org/home/news/2009/2009july/NBII_Summer_09.pdf Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine) were harvested and the information made available through the Data Commons (http://www.datacommons.psu.edu/) at Penn State.

Notes

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with National Biological Information Infrastructure

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what National Biological Information Infrastructure claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to National Biological Information Infrastructure before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about National Biological Information Infrastructure ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of National Biological Information Infrastructure

In research: National Biological Information Infrastructure appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses National Biological Information Infrastructure in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: National Biological Information Infrastructure is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Biodiversity, Information technology management, Nature conservation organizations based in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for National Biological Information Infrastructure outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study National Biological Information Infrastructure in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what National Biological Information Infrastructure means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain National Biological Information Infrastructure out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is National Biological Information Infrastructure in simple terms?

Why does National Biological Information Infrastructure matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study National Biological Information Infrastructure?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on National Biological Information Infrastructure.