Using OBIS
What is the aim of this website?
What are the benefits of OBIS?
What can I do with OBIS at present?
What improvements is OBIS planning?
How can students use OBIS for learning?
Who is using OBIS?
How do I cite data published through OBIS?
What are the
limitations of the data in OBIS?
How can I search and explore data?
How can I download data?
This website provides a portal or gateway to many datasets containing information on where and when marine species have been recorded. The datasets are integrated so you can search them all seamlessly by species name, higher taxonomic level, geographic area, depth, and time; and then map and find environmental data related to the locations (see ‘What can I do with OBIS?’).
This website aims to be (a) authoritative, professional, and credible, (b) concise, easily read and understood, and use minimal jargon, (c) user friendly with a logical consistent design and flow, and (d) regularly updated. It should also (e) have as few clicks as possible, and (f) we should be easily contacted (e.g. by email, or see meetings where OBIS representatives can be met). Please let us know how to improve by emailing OBISsupport(at)marine.rutgers.edu. We are working to make OBIS as comprehensive as possible (see “What are the limitations of data?”).
What are the benefits of OBIS?
The immediate benefit of OBIS is that it publishes data on the spatial and temporal distribution of marine species, with online data exploration software, at no charge to anybody with access to the World Wide Web. The ease of rapid data access then benefits education, research and management of marine biodiversity and ecosystems; and through this use, society in general. OBIS thus saves people and organisations needing primary data on marine species locations both time and money, and fosters new syntheses of data across geographic, taxonomic, and time scales. OBIS can also assist where data generators have a legal or contractual obligation to make data publicly available.
OBIS enables data to be discovered that are otherwise unpublished or difficult to access. OBIS data has scientific authority, in being collected and managed by reputable scientists and institutions. As with paper publications, the publication of data through OBIS increases the visibility of the productivity of these scientists and their organisations.
Participation in OBIS involves working with the latest standards in biodiversity informatics data management. The practice of adopting standards can help data management within organisations and research teams, as well as facilitating data publication.
OBIS keeps data alive and available by publishing it online. OBIS will host data should any data provider be unable to continue to host it in their own system. In addition to having full back-up copies of the data, OBIS is creating several mirror sites so its data will be replicated in different parts of the world.
From the OBIS portal (the first website page connecting to the data), you can
- search where a marine genus and/or species is recorded in the data published through OBIS;
- download data published in OBIS for any species, including location, depth, date and time collected, source datasets, and verified taxonomic name information;
- plot species locations on a range of flat and spherical views of the world, including polar views, using the C-Squares Mapper;
- plot species against background maps of sea temperature, depth, and salinity using the KGS Mapper;
- use environmental data for the locations of these data to predict the species potential range on the KGS Mapper;
- explore relationships between species and environmental data on KGS Mapper to see which parameters best explain a species distribution;
- browse down a taxonomic hierarchy to get lists of all species in OBIS for a phylum, class, order of higher taxonomic group;
- plot maps of all data at a higher taxonomic level;
- search for lists of species recorded in OBIS by country (Exclusive Economic Zone), sea or ocean, Large Marine Ecosystems, FAO and ICES fishery areas, Longhurst’s pelagic regions, depth, date, and by entering latitude – longitude coordinates;
- connect to other sources of information on the species, including genetic data, published literature, and images.
Please see
How can I search and explore data? for detailed instructions.
OBIS wishes to
- continue to publish more data and improve data quality. In particular, it intends to publish at least one location for every known marine species before 2010;
- have online tools to show individual animal tracks across the oceans (e.g. satellite tagged turtles);
- have online tools to show time-series and depth patterns of species distributions;
- allow users to select different species for mapping together, and improve online editing of data;
- allow users to search OBIS by habitat;
- have maps of the distribution ranges for all species in OBIS;
- expand the OBIS data schema to allow use of abundance data and sampling effort;
- add geographic areas to the “Advanced Search” options of OBIS, so users can search by genus and/or species, time period, depth range, latitude-longitude coordinates, and geographic area.
How can students use OBIS for learning?
OBIS is a source of data and information, and provides links to other authoritative resources. It also allows students to develop skills in using online resources, discriminating between authoritative and less scholarly sources, learn about the strengths and weaknesses of using primary data that are only a sample of the potential data, and using this to infer the distributions of species. Comparison with secondary sources of information is encouraged.
The following communities are anticipated to use the OBIS portal (in no order of priority): researchers, fishery scientists and managers, policy maker, educators, amateur naturalists, environmental NGO, consultants, nature conservation organisations, and students.
In the month of February 2007 OBIS received about over 1 million hits from 50,000 visitors in at least 26 countries. About half of users came from educational, and at least 10% from commercial, institutions. Detailed web statistics and history are available here.
At present, you can search OBIS by a genus and species name, higher taxonomic group (e.g. whales, fish, anemones), and geographic area. Some of the mapping tools enable editing of the data.
From the first web page you can (1) enter a genus, species or common name in the search box, or (2) click on an area of the map to get a list of all species in that area. Note you can change the size of the map area searched from 5, to 1 or 0.5 degrees as you wish. The area being searched is shown by a box over the area clicked on the map. Note that common names are only available for vertebrates and a few other species and are not consistently used between countries. Also on the first page are buttons to go to "Advanced Search" and "Browse by taxonomic groups" options.
At the top of all other pages except the first, is an option to search for (a) a species by genus, full species or common name ("name search"), and (b) all species in certain geographic areas. These areas are countries Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), International Hydrographic Office (IHO) sea and ocean areas, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) fishery areas, International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) areas, Large Marine Ecosystems (LME), and Longhurst's pelagic regions.
From the Advanced Search page you can refine your search by entering either genus and/or species name, dates, depth range, latitude-longitude coordinates, and/or dataset. To get all data from one dataset, just leave other search options empty and select that dataset.
If you do not know a genus or species name, you can browse down a hierarchy of taxonomic groups (e.g. from vertebrate to fish to cod). Note you can also request a map of all locations of records for a higher taxonomic group, such as all whales.
The above searches will provide a page with a list of one or more species names. Note that some names may be spelling variants or synonyms, and that the use of some names may have changed over time. We are planning to add notes on such issues. Click on the species names to produce a "Species Results" page. This shows (a) a map of locations with data in OBIS, (b) several links to more information about the species, including literature, images, and genetic information, (c) a list of the source datasets is at the bottom of the page, (d) buttons to click to view and download the data in .html or .txt formats, and (e) two additional mapping tools.
The KGS Mapper will match the species locations against 52 ocean environmental variables and use this to show where else these conditions have occurred. You can select which environmental variable you feel is most appropriate, and edit them if you have more precise data or you can see that spatial resolution issues may have generated incorrect values. More advanced data editing is also possible.
The ACON Mapper shows data abundance using pie charts on maps, allows editing of data mapped, and can plot maps by the years the data was collected. A range of data editing and download options are available.
All maps can be saved to your desktop by right clicking your PC mouse and clicking "save image".
Note that larger datasets will take longer to search, explore, and map. Consider limiting the amount of data being explored by using Advanced Search to select a limited time, depth or range of datasets. For researchers wanting large amounts of data please do some exploratory work and then contact obissupport(at)marine.rutgers.edu to email it to you.
You first need to search OBIS by species, higher taxon, geographic area and/or other options (see above) to get a "Species Results" page. Below the map and mapping options you can view and download data your previously selected in .html or .txt formats.
