<div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div><b><font size="4"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">USGS BISON Online Mapping Application (</font><a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/" target="_blank" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/</a>) <font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Adds USGS Native Bee Species Occurrence Data:</font></font></b></div>
<div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">The USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON – <a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/" target="_blank">http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/</a>) online mapping application has added just over two hundred thousand species occurrence records for keystone pollinators–native bees. This native bee species occurrences dataset from the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center’s Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (lead by <a href="http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/staff/profiles/documents/droege.htm">Sam Droege</a>) is just one of a series of USGS science center datasets including bird and bat species occurrence datasets that are currently being processed for public release and download through BISON. Once included in BISON, they can be integrated with other prominent species occurrence datasets from sources such as the United States
Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) PLANTS database, the Illinois Natural
History Survey, the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute’s Snow
Entomological Museum Collection, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s (ARS) Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory, among other participating BISON and GBIF </font><a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/#providerTab" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Data Providers</a><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">. An additional 53 map
layers are also available in the online map viewer; and various <a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/doc/index.jsp">Developer Tools</a> and <a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/doc/services">Application Programming Interface</a>s (API) or Web Services capabilities are also available for
tool development and more direct access to the data.</font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">A product of the USGS Core Science Analytics, Synthesis, and Libraries (CSAS&L) Program, BISON is an information system that allows users to access, explore, and download U.S. species occurrence data from participating BISON and GBIF <a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/#providerTab">Data Providers</a>. Researchers collect species occurrence data, records of an organism at a particular time in a particular place, as a primary or ancillary function of many biological field investigations. Presently, these data reside in numerous distributed systems and formats (including publications) and are consequently not being used to their full potential. As a step toward addressing this challenge, the USGS is developing BISON as an integrated and permanent resource for biological occurrence data from the United States. BISON will leverage the accumulated human infrastructural resources of the long-term USGS investment in research and information management and delivery. USGS is also the <a href="http://www.gbif.org/country/US">U.S. Node</a> of the <a href="http://www.gbif.org/">Global Biodiversity Information Facility</a> (GBIF), an international, government-initiated and funded effort focused on making biodiversity data freely available for scientific research, conservation, and sustainable development. USGS, with its partners at the Department of Energy's <a href="http://www.ornl.gov/">Oak Ridge National Laboratory</a> (ORNL), hosts a full mirror of the hundreds of millions of global records to which GBIF provides access. BISON was initiated with the 110 million records GBIF makes available from the U.S. and is integrating millions more records from other sources each year.</font></div>
<div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b>Please send any comments, questions, errors or bugs encountered to <a href="mailto:bison@usgs.gov">bison@usgs.gov</a>.</b></font></div>
<div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Cheers, Liz</font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div>
<div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">Elizabeth Sellers</div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">Eco-Science Synthesis (ESS)</div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">
Core Science Analytics and Synthesis (CSAS)</div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">BISON Data Team; USGS Liaison to the Plant Conservation Alliance</div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">United States Geological Survey (USGS)</div>
<div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, Mail Stop 302</div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">Reston, VA 20192 USA</div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">Room 2A231C</div>
<div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">703.648.4385 <a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=esellers@usgs.gov" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">esellers@usgs.gov</a></div>
<div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">Looking for species occurrence data for the U.S.? Check out:</div><div style="font-family:arial;font-size:small">Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) <a href="http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">http://bison.usgs.ornl.gov/</a></div>
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