The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) is a web-based access point to information about the distribution and abundance of living species in the ocean.
It originated in an idea and prototype system developed at Rutgers University by a team led by Dr. J. Frederick Grassle that included Yunqing (Phoebe) Zhang, Karen Stocks, and Carolyn Flanders. Later, it was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and other sources to become the information management component of the Census of Marine Life. According to the official OBIS web site, the OBIS Portal "accesses data content, information infrastructure, and informatics tools - maps, visualizations, and models ? to provide a dynamic, global facility in four dimensions (the three dimensions of space plus time). Potential uses are to reveal new spatial/temporal patterns; to generate new hypotheses about the global marine ecosystem; and to guide future field expeditions."
The initial OBIS Portal at Rutgers University has been online since 2002, with accessible data growing from about 500,000 observations and data points when first launched, to over 10 million as at mid-2006, from a growing network of over 140 data providers in more than 50 countries worldwide. Available data cover all groups of organisms that have any association with marine or estuarine habitats, also including shorelines and the atmosphere above the ocean, such as marine vertebrates (fishes, marine mammals, turtles, seabirds, etc.); marine invertebrates (including zooplankton); marine bacteria; and marine plants (e.g. phytoplankton, seaweeds, mangroves).
OBIS portal
The OBIS Portal also hosts, or provides links to, a variety of software tools that can operate on OBIS data to provide mapping, analysis, or data modelling services, including the KGS Mapper, the c-squares mapper, and the ACON mapper, and this number is expected to grow significantly in scope and capabilities through time.
Regional OBIS nodes
Over the period 2004-present, an international network of Regional OBIS Nodes has also been established, that are facilitating the connection of data sources in their region to the master OBIS data network and also increasingly provide specialised services or views of OBIS data to users in their particular region.
Hosted by National Oceans Office and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - Marine and Atmospheric Research. Managed by Alicja Mosbauer
Wood J.B., Zhang, P.Y., Costello, M.J. and Grassle, J.F. 2006. An introduction to OBIS, www.iobis.org. In: Miloslavich P. and Klein E. (eds), Caribbean marine biodiversity: the known and the unknown. DEStech Publications Inc., Lancaster Pennsylvania USA, pp. 253-254.
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