The blitz be startin’ tomorrow, aarrrr. Here’s a portal where you can view observations, and help with species identification. There are also links into a wiki, where you can read (or help create) instructions, classroom tips, etc.
September 19, 2008
September 9, 2008
2008 Blogger Bioblitz Announced.
The 2008 blogger bioblitz is on for the week of Sept. 20 - Sept. 28. (Two weekends to work with!) Blindingly soon, yes, but what the heck.
A portal will be up next week with a data spreadsheet for download; instructions on conducting a blitz; and some basic browsing and querying capabilities.
Keen to put our semantic eco-blogging tools to use, the Spire project has volunteered to do this year’s data integration and analysis. If you want to share your observations, you will be able to contribute data any of 3 ways: by uploading your data spreadsheet; by maintaining an on-line spreadsheet (via, e.g., Google Docs); or by using Spotter to automatically generate an RDF record for each taxon observed. If you do one of the first two options, you’re data will be converted to RDF by rdf123. (Note: Spotter is currently broken on Firefox 3 - we hope to fix this shortly. UPDATE : Fixed.)
Our goal (beyond encouraging people to explore their natural environment) is to integrate data we receive with background and contextual data (e.g. invasive species lists, food webs, etc.), put it on a map, and make it browsable. Our broader goal is to develop technology that transforms bioblitz and eco-blog data into a global human sensor-net.
If you plan on participating, please either leave a comment on this site or send me email, so that we can link to your blog from the portal.
Many thanks to all who get involved!
August 25, 2007
RDF123, enabling semantic web spreadsheets
As announced last week on the Ebiquity blog, RDF123 (http://rdf123.umbc.edu/) is a highly flexible open-source tool for transforming spreadsheet data to RDF. It is intended for use with ontologies in any content area.
We tested RDF123 using spreadsheet data from the first annual Blogger BioBlitz in 2007. This biodiversity survey involved sightings of a broad range of taxa in 17 localities in April 2007. We mapped spreadsheet columns to concepts in SPIRE’s ETHAN and observation ontologies so that RDF123 could generate OWL representations. The resulting OWL data was posted on the web where it was indexed by Swoogle, the semantic web search engine. We found that of 1200 Blogger BioBlitz observations, 47 of them were of species defined as “of concern†by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Feel free to read more if you want the technical details.
June 12, 2007
Google Docs is tipping
This is only tangentially related to wildlife observation, but some of you may be interested. Google Docs, the free online service that allows collaboration and maintenance of spreadsheets and word-processed documents, has been around since last October. After a flurry of reviews and some half-hearted suggestions we try to use it, it kind of faded from memory.
This week, however, three more or less unrelated projects I’m involved in have started to use it. For example, the Blogger BioBlitz spreadsheet. I did most of my heavy duty manipulation using Microsoft Excel, which is a good thing because I don’t think it is easy to grab a region and automatically fill in columns as you can in Excel. Rather than email my version to others for proofreading and whatever else needs to be done, I posted it to Google Docs and invited the other data junkies to work on it there too. I hope this will avoid problems with individual versions getting out of synchrony. Next I’ll invite all the bloggers who participated to take a look and let me know if they have changes. The best thing about it so far is the ability to see who’s been making what changes, and potentially even revert to a previous version.
Two other colleagues of mine have, for the first time, posted manuscripts online for us to collaborate on. So, for reasons unknown, suddenly Google Docs appears to be worth trying, suggesting to me that the application is tipping. Perhaps we just needed a few months of awkward attempts to solve our collaboration problems in other ways to convince us Google Docs might be better.
May 24, 2007
Wrapping up the Rock Creek BioBlitz
I am not an expert in any group other than birds and there are plenty of birders better than I am. For example, read John’s account of his experiences birding for the BioBlitz. So, I spent my Saturday morning shift shadowing the scene at the scientists’ area near the Nature Center.
My colleagues at the Lepidoptera tables, Don Davis, John Brown, and Mark Metz, were busy sorting and pinning the winnings of the blacklights and traps set out overnight. I had helped Eric Lind set up one of these the previous night. They did reasonably well, though Don Davis remarked that warmer weather would have meant more than a hundred species rather than the 40 or so they found. The final tally across all groups, now reported on the official BioBlitz blog as 666, will continue to climb as entomologists in particular tackle the laborious task of identifying specimens. More than once I saw one expert say to another, “I dunno what it is” and shrug their shoulders. For me this illustrates that 1) taxonomic experts, with total focus on and vast knowledge of their groups, are human too, 2) nature’s diversity even in an urban park is awesome, and 3) specimens are invaluable for such inventories. I assume that the 666 includes their estimates of how many different kinds, even if the bug folks really don’t know exactly what they found yet. No comment on the significance of the number of the beast vis a vis the evolutionary bent of this whole enterprise.
May 18, 2007
Myxomycetes at the Rock Creek BioBlitz
Lead off story: These stylish brown tufts are the fruiting bodies of Stemonitis (probably S. axifera), a beautiful slime mold lurking under a rotting log. Never would have known what they were, except I ran into Dr. Harold Keller and a team of canopy climbers as we returned to base camp from our field outing. They came all the way from the University of Central Missouri to look for slime molds, lichens, and other canopy dwellers. He looked at the photo, said it was a beautiful specimen and wished I’d collected it. Next time I’ll know how to collect slime molds (you cut off the bark they are on and glue the whole thing to the bottom of a box).
As the Urban Pantheist notes, it is really hard to focus on too many things at once. At least 50% of my three hours with the herp survey team were spent trying to keep my kids entertained so they wouldn’t annoy everyone around them. Still, I feel I’ve made up for not herping on my Blogger BioBlitz. Plan to spend tomorrow morning with the Lepidopterists, who don’t expect much in this chilly weather.
What we saw:
May 16, 2007
Rock Creek Park Bioblitz — join us!
Blogger BioBlitz results are due soon, and the Spire team is still planning to get that data out on the Semantic Web where we can play with it. In the meantime, I’ve got a chance to redeem myself at another bioblitz — this time a traditional one with massive scientist and volunteer participation. The site is Rock Creek Park in the heart of Washington, DC. It is probably not to late to join in the festivities, which begin at 11:30 a.m. this Friday and go until noon on Saturday. Get more information and sign up at the National Geographic site.
I say I can redeem myself because I never did do the blacklighting for moths that I promised for the Blogger BioBlitz. So I’m planning to learn from two of my Leptree.net colleagues, Don Davis and John Brown, as they inventory the Lepidoptera in the park.
A second choice might have been to join the amphibian survey team. One morning I tagged along with Evan Grant, a USGS biologist and University of Maryland graduate student, searching for stream salamanders in Rock Creek Park. The deepest reaches of the park can be surprisingly quiet. I highly recommend creek-walking, whether for science or for pleasure (not that the two are mutually exclusive).
April 30, 2007
BioBlitz Report 2: The rest of the animals
I’m going to summarize my observations now, before I’ve had a chance to really tally and identify everything. I just haven’t had the time to sort through the fruits of my various traps (is that mixing metaphors?).
To recap, I spent last Tuesday in what I called two habitats: upland forest and riparian. They could both be considered riparian, but I focussed either on the higher elevations further from the stream, or on the area adjacent to the stream. There was a nice woodchip path but I still spent a lot of time moving up and down the hill as I changed my focus from birds, to the pit traps, to plants and fungi, to any little insect or spider I could find. I then spent a few hours on Friday in an open field, also near a stream but dominated by grasses not woodland.
The birds I followed just about anywhere, but it was helpful to have the 15 x 15 meter plots to focus on for the earthbound critters. The flying insect trays were not as successful as the pit traps. For now I’m pooling everything together.
Here’s what I found:
(more…)
April 28, 2007
BioBlitz Report 1: The Birds of Mt. Pleasant
After three final hours of blitzing this morning I’m finally ready for more in-depth accounts of the week’s observations. I start with birds, my first passion and the group I know best. Yet I make no claims to being a real birder — there’s a reason I chose to study American crows in lower Michigan for my dissertation. Big black noisy bird? Can’t be anything else. I’ve tended to avoid “little brown birds” that hide in the brush, and those pesky little warblers that give you neck strain. But this BioBlitz gave me the chance to add one or two of each to my life list.
April 26, 2007
Petiolar nectaries
I was planning to title this entry “I stand corrected and I learn something,” but Tim Finin has pointed out that attempts to be witty or provocative just don’t work in this search-engine-optimized world.
Despite my Ph.D. in biology, I’ve never had a course in botany, which my mother finds very disappointing. Jenn points out the “scale insects” I reported yesterday are likely to be petiolar glands. These have their own interesting story. Most likely they serve as “nectaries,” producing a reward for ants that in turn defend the tree against (for example) tent caterpillars. So here’s a photo of the tent caterpillars I found during my BioBlitz, which were not on the same tree.
For those inclined to read the literature, I found a classic abstract by David Tilman on the ant-cherry-caterpillar story.