The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS): An On-line, Worldwide Atlas for Accessing, Modeling and Mapping Marine Biological Data in a Multidimensional Geographic Context

~ B I S is a component of the Census of Marine Life (CoML) an international program to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life. There is no adequate system for retrieval of ocean biological data. The few existing databases do not usefully summarize known distributions and abundance of marine life nor are they organized to encourage frequent use and intercomparison of datasets. An on-line, user-friendly system for absorbing, integrating, and assessing data about life in the oceans will stimulate taxonomic and systematic research and generate new hypotheses concerning evolutionary processes, factors related to maintenance of species distributions, and roles of marine organisms in marine ecosystem function. Over the past three decades there have been major advances in understanding the outlines of relationships among broadly-defined trophic units and their biogeochemical roles in ecosystems. Understanding of spatial pattern of marine ecosystems, their evolution, and how they respond to environmental change will require greater use of species-level data. The geographical boundaries of ecosystems are poorly defined and there is little agreement on the number of faunal provinces and their boundaries. The United Nations Environmental Program Global Biodiversity Assessment (UNEP, 1995) provides two biogeographic maps: one recognizes six classes of "Oceanic Realms" (p. 100) and the other classifies coastal fisheries management areas into 49 "Large Marine Ecosystems" (p. 502). A more recent global classification of surface waters recognizes 51 geographic provinces (Longhurst, 1998). Accurate data on the spatial and temporal distribution of most marine species are not readily available. There are no good maps of marine biodiversity (Grassle and Stocks, 1999) and biogeographic classifications seldom consider life in deep-sea sediments where communities have high marine biodiversity. Description of previously unknown species and higher taxa of marine life from both deep-sea and shallow bottom communities continues steadily and, in the case of some groups, at an increasing pace (Figure 1). As accurate data on abundance and distribution of marine taxa accumulate, there is an urgent need for information systems to retrieve and analyze data in the context of temporal and spatial patterns of synoptic physical and biological data from satellites, improved bathymetry, and output from global models. In the past two decades, oceanography has become a more mature, integrative, interdisciplinary science. The roles of major taxa in chemical and geological processes in the ocean are becoming better understood and the field of biogeochemical research has grown rapidly. Biologists and physical oceanographers are working together to model interactions of taxonomic and functional groups of organisms amongst each other and with the physical environment. Such coupled physical/biological models increase the resolution of biological elements to provide greater realism. In parallel, greater integration within the biological sciences is