Global Biodiversity Information Facility
GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) is an international network and data infrastructure that provides open access to biodiversity data, supporting scientific research and policy-making.
About Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments. GBIF provides open access to data about all types of life on Earth and supports scientific research and policy by offering biodiversity-related evidence. The network is composed of participating countries, organizations, and data publishers, facilitating extensive collaboration on a global scale.
GBIF Services and Tools
GBIF offers several critical tools and services to aid in the publication and validation of biodiversity data. The Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) is a free, open-source software tool helping organizations publish biodiversity data. Additionally, GBIF offers a data validator tool to check datasets prior to publication, providing specific recommendations for improvements. GBIF also assigns Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to datasets to ensure proper citation and credit for data publishers.
Data and Research Uses of GBIF
GBIF's extensive data infrastructure supports scientific studies, with its data being used in more than four peer-reviewed journal papers daily. The data are used to assess extinction risks, identify and conserve key biodiversity areas, and monitor invasive species. GBIF's resources contribute to informed decision-making and policy, including inputs to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Researchers can access the data in tab-delimited CSV and Darwin Core Archive formats, leveraging tools like rgbif for R and pygbif for Python.
GBIF Network and Community Engagement
GBIF's network includes hundreds of institutions that publish biodiversity data and thousands of volunteers involved through citizen science programs. The organization offers hosted portals to support biodiversity data use and engagement at national, institutional, regional, and thematic scales. GBIF's strategic framework emphasizes value enhancement and coherence through innovation and community involvement, aiming to foster wider collaboration and data sharing.
Technical Infrastructure of GBIF
GBIF's data processing infrastructure is adept at crawling, fragmenting, normalizing, and interpreting data from diverse sources. The platform supports four classes of datasets: resources metadata, checklist data, occurrence data, and sampling-event data. GBIF also collaborates with geneticists to display DNA-derived data, offering a more comprehensive picture of life on Earth. Tools like the Sequence ID query taxonomy reference databases for Fungi, Animals, Bacteria, and Archaea.