Volume No. 10, 2001
The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) <http://www.nbii.gov> is a broad,
collaborative program to provide increased access to data and
information on the nation's biological resources.
The NBII links many different biological databases, information
products, and analytical tools that have been developed and
maintained by NBII partners and contributors in government
agencies, academic institutions, nongovernment organizations, and
private industry.
NBII partners and collaborators also work on new standards, tools,
and technologies that make it easier to find, integrate, and apply
biological resources information. Resource managers,
scientists, educators, and the general public use the NBII to
answer a wide range of questions related to the management, use, or
conservation of this nation's biological resources.
One of the key components of the NBII is a system of nodes that is being developed to ensure inclusion and participation from all sectors of society. The NBII nodes are of three types: regional, thematic, and infrastructure.
Regional nodes have a geographic orientation and represent a regional approach to local data issues, data collectors, and owners.
Thematic nodes focus on a particular biological issue (for example, amphibian decline and deformity), providing the support and infrastructure to help address these issues that usually transcend geographic regions.
Infrastructure nodes are devoted to development or adoption of standards, tool suites, and common protocols. These facilitate interoperability among nodes and between the NBII and other national and international systems.
As part of the overall NBII effort, GAP investigators are helping many organizations apply GAP data to their own activities. Hundreds of applications of GAP information-both data and analyses-have been made nationwide, ranging from forest management, conservation planning, and scientific research endeavors to business and industry applications. For a sample of GAP applications see www.gap.uidaho.edu/applications/applications.htm.
In addition to GAP, some other programs of the NBII include:
The NBII is working with several partner agencies and
organizations to help provide access to these two important sources
of biological taxonomic information. The Integrated Taxonomic
Information System (ITIS;
www.itis.usda.gov) is the first comprehensive, standardized
reference for the scientific names-as well as synonyms and common
names-of all the plants and animals of North America and the
surrounding oceans.
The Taxonomic Resources and Expertise Directory (TRED;
www.nbii.gov/datainfo/syscollect/tred/) is an online directory
of taxonomic specialists with expertise on the biological diversity
of North America (north of Mexico) and adjacent oceans.
The Land Use History of North America program (LUHNA http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/) seeks to understand the relationships between human land use and land cover change and works to assess future implications of these interactions. LUHNA products and research results are widely available to Internet users through the NBII.
The U.S. Geological Survey is cooperating with the National Park Service to produce detailed, computerized maps of the vegetation of 250 National Park units across the United States (http://biology.usgs.gov/npsveg/). Through this program a wide variety of data and synthesized information on the vegetation resources of our National Parks are being made available to Internet users through the NBII.
The nodes and programs discussed above illustrate just some of the NBII's growing capability to foster the dissemination of GAP and similar products and concepts. Some readers may recall past discussions within the GAP community about GAP's diffusion to, and adoption by, major sectors of society as a technical innovation (for example, see Forester et al. 1996). Now that many of the first generation GAP state projects have been completed, and large amounts of biological, land management, and analytical spatial data are available, the NBII is providing the vehicle for wide dissemination of the information along with a great deal of other complimentary biological information, such as taxonomic and historical information. Those early discussions could not have anticipated the magnitude of improvements in information technology, nor the related development of a broad infrastructure for the nation's biological information. Today, the integration of GAP data with the NBII significantly improves both the rate and extent of GAP product dissemination and adoption.
To review briefly, the diffusion of innovations is the process
by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels
over time among the members of a social system.
It is a special kind of communication because the messages have to
do with new ideas. The four main elements of the diffusion of
innovations are:
Two of these elements-communication about the innovation and the time or rate of diffusion-become positively affected under the broad NBII umbrella of increased access to data and information on the nation's biological resources. The NBII is facilitating communication about GAP products among a wider, more diverse audience than the proximate community of those producing GAP information. And the NBII is speeding up the rate of diffusion of GAP products through its larger infrastructure.
The NBII is also vital to the interface with the fourth element, the social system that adopts or rejects the innovation. In this regard, a better understanding of this element is beginning to emerge. It is clear, for example, that there is not just one social system but a number of quite different social systems that collectively make up the group of GAP users.
For example, in their article on barriers to the use of GAP data by local and regional land use planners in New Mexico, Russ Winn and Diane-Michele Prindeville show that in this case the factors limiting the adoption of GAP is less one of access, it is actually about social values. The social values governing county land use planning in New Mexico are heavily weighted to economic development. This is in contrast to a rapidly developing urban county with different social values that recently adopted GAP spatial data and analyses as a direct part of their detailed conservation planning process (see "A Biodiversity Plan for Pierce County, Washington" at www.co.pierce.wa.us/xml/services/home/property/pals/pdf/gap.pdf). In her article on conservation planning in Tennessee, Marty Marina discusses the impact GAP has had in developing a capability for conservation planning in that state, and the time and effort that it took to achieve adoption. Steve Williams, Casson Stallings, JohnAnn Shearer, and Alexa McKerrow describe in their article an important tool for disseminating GAP information within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They point the way along an avenue of an integrated GAP and NBII.
Forester, D.J., G.E. Machlis, and J.E. McKendry. 1996. Extending gap analysis to include socioeconomic factors. Pages 39-53 in J.M. Scott et al., editors. Gap analysis: A landscape approach to biodiversity planning. American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Bethesda, Maryland.
Rogers, E. 1983. The diffusion of innovations. Free Press, New York. 453 pp.
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