The Science Plan
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 15:11:10 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: pswhite@unc.edu ("Peter S. White")
To: dl@dial.pick.uga.edu (Discover Life in America)
Subject: Re: Please post the draft plan
THE SCIENCE PLAN
FOR THE ALL TAXA BIODIVERSITY INVENTORY (ATBI)
IN GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK,
NORTH CAROLINA AND TENNESSEE
July, 1999
Science Committee, Discover Life in America
Peter White (pswhite@unc.edu, 919-962-6939) and
John Morse (jmorse@clemson.edu, 864-656-5049), Co-Chairs
Frank Harris, Keith Langdon, Rex Lowe, Becky Nichols, Chuck Parker, John
Pickering, Mike Sharkey
The All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, a project of Discover Life in America, seeks to inventory the estimated 100,000 species of living organisms in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and to develop checklists, reports, maps, databases, and natural history profiles that describe the biology of this rich landscape to a wide audience. This Science Plan describes the organizing themes for this inventory, identifies objectives, and presents an annual calendar of tasks.
This plan was drafted by the Science Committee after the Annual Meeting of the ATBI project in December, 1998. The plan will be available for review via the Discover Life in America web site (www.discoverlife.org). It will incorporate the individual plans of the Taxonomic Working Groups (TWIGs), as these become available, and will be submitted each year to the TWIGs as part of an annual review process that also includes review by an external panel. The plan will be revised formally each year at the Annual Meeting of ATBI and then submitted by the Science Committee to the Discover Life Board of Directors for adoption.
We present the organizing themes and objectives of the Science Plan below
2E The plan includes four Appendices: Appendix 1-Near Term Objectives;
Appendix 2-The User's Guide; Appendix 3-Traditional and Structured Collecting and Observing; and Appendix 4-Annual Calendar for the Science Committee.
Central themes and a new paradigm for biological inventory
The southern Appalachians have attracted scientific exploration for over two centuries. Great Smoky Mountains National Park itself has been explored by taxonomists since it was established in 1934. Indeed, scientists were among those campaigning for a national park in the southern mountains in the early 1900s. All park conservationists recognized the importance of the rich plant and animal life of this landscape as they argued for the creation of the park. The ATBI will document past scientific observations, expand and enhance ongoing interest, and develop a new, systematic approach to observation throughout the park's landscape.
We define five themes for the Science Plan. These themes describe our basic approach and form the philosophical underpinnings of our objectives. Collectively they produce a new paradigm for biological inventory. After an overview of each theme, we list objectives for each.
The five Themes are:
Theme 1: An inventory for all taxa and coordination across taxonomic groups;
Theme 2: Taxonomic Working Groups (TWIGs) and the taxonomic inventory;
Theme 3: Taxonomic inventory in an ecological and conservation context;
Theme 4: A Geographic Information System (GIS) as an organizing and analysis tool; and
Theme 5: Involvement of the public, schools, and volunteers.
* Theme 1: An inventory for all taxa and coordination across taxonomic groups
The first theme is that this inventory will address all taxonomic groups. This establishes Great Smoky Mountains National Park as the first site in North America and one of the first sites in the world to have a thorough and integrated inventory of its living things. Not only will this project add tremendously to the understanding of the park and its conservation of biological diversity, but it will also stimulate the training of taxonomists, drawing attention to the importance of taxonomy and systematics as fields of human knowledge.
We seek to harness the interest that field biologists have always had in the park and to stimulate an expansion of this work. We seek to reach all biologists who visit the park with the goals and structure of ATBI and to enlist cooperation, capture information, and enhance information quality. The park's collecting permit system is one vehicle for this communication. Information on ATBI can be distributed when collecting permits are applied for or issued and in the mailings that request Annual Investigator Reports.
Taxonomic Working Groups (TWIGs) have been organized for major groups of living things. Through the TWIGs, the project seeks to reach professional societies and individual investigators to expand taxonomic effort in the park. The TWIG organization is described below in more detail as our second theme. The Science Committee and the ATBI Coordinating Office will work with the TWIGs to create common protocols and guidelines across taxonomic groups.
Even with promotion of ATBI, there will be taxonomic groups that are receiving inadequate attention. The Science Committee must play a role in identifying understudied groups, groups that have no TWIG or for which the TWIG needs assistance in organizing, groups for which the methods for inventory are obscure within ATBI, and other special opportunities (e.g., bringing in an expert in a particular group to advise ATBI on how to approach that group). The Science Committee will seek funding to promote work in those problematic or poorly known groups. The Science Committee will seek opportunities to bring specialists to the park to consult on inventory approaches and techniques.
The Science Committee will seek the establishment of fellowships and sabbatical leave programs, as well as other forms of support (for example, travel and housing), that will give taxonomists and graduate students the opportunity to reside in the park for varying periods of time-for a summer or 6 months or a full year or more to work on particular priority groups and problems.
Bioquests are another way to expand taxonomic work in the park. Bioquests will bring groups of scientists and amateur naturalists to the park for short but intense periods of work. The TWIGs and Science Committee will develop guidelines for Bioquests (including organization, support functions, and data capture) and for quality control and assurance for all data, including specimen labels and checklists.
We envision an ATBI Coordinating Office that will be an information center for collectors, will operate the bulk sampling, sorting center, and volunteer programs, will coordinate TWIG Bioquests, and will serve as the interface between the park's collecting permit system and field collectors. The Coordinating Office will maintain the running scoreboard of the taxonomic inventory, including working checklists and newsworthy statistics (e.g., species new to North Carolina and Tennessee, new to the park, new to the five counties of the park, and new to science). The Coordinating Office will track and archive the developing history of the project and will maintain the registry of participants.
The ATBI Coordinating Office will oversee support functions for field work, including housing, temporary work space, storage facilities (e.g., freezers), microscopes, cameras, bar coding machines, software, computers, and transportation.
Objectives of Theme 1
Objective 1-1: Establish a Coordinating Office in Great Smoky Mountains National Park that will provide information to field workers, operate the bulk sampling and sorting center protocols, archive information and data, coordinate TWIG Bioquests and other field activities of the TWIGs, oversee or coordinate the availability of support functions (housing, temporary work space, storage facilities, microscopes, cameras, bar coding equipment, software, computers, and transportation), and maintain the volunteer program and registry of participants.
Objective 1-2: Keep the project scoreboard: a running checklist of all organisms in the park, including working checklists and newsworthy statistics of species new to North Carolina and Tennessee, new to the park, new to the five counties of the park, and new to science and estimates of inventory completeness. Objective 1-3: Describe and archive the field effort, history of the project, and observational methods in sufficient detail to permit repeat of these methods and to allow future detection of change for appropriate observations.
Objective 1-4: Work with the TWIGs and Database Committee on protocols to capture data on collections and observations made in the park, whether by independent investigators, TWIG projects, Bioquests, park employees, or the public.
Objective 1-5: Work with the TWIGs to develop guidelines for Bioquests.
Objective 1-6: Promote ATBI through, and capture information from, the park's collecting permit system and Annual Investigator Reports.
Objective 1-7: Expand taxonomic interest by assisting the TWIGs in promoting ATBI to professional societies.
Objective 1-8: Promote training of a new generation of taxonomic specialists in participating Universities by targeting grant dollars for Graduate Research Assistantships in Taxonomy and Systematics.
Objective 1-9: Improve job market opportunities for newly trained taxonomists and systematists, for example by demonstrating to universities and museums the availability of extramural support for inventories, collection improvement, and systematics research.
Objective 1-10: Budget support for graduate fellowships, faculty sabbatical leave grants, and other financial assistance to facilitate intensive investigation of priority groups and problems by visiting specialists living temporarily in the Park
Objective 1-11: Regularly review the organizational status and composition of TWIGs and aggressively seek specialists for understudied groups, funding the work on such groups appropriately.
* Theme 2: Taxonomic Working Groups (TWIGs) and the taxonomic inventory
The fundamental work of ATBI will be done by Taxonomic Working Groups (TWIGs) organized around specific biological groups. The Science Committee depends on the work of the TWIGs to build the long-term Science Plan.
TWIGs have key tasks:
enlisting the participation of and communicate with a large network of taxonomists and professional societies;
develop criteria for membership in the project and insure participants are registered with the ATBI Coordinating Office;
assessing the current state of knowledge about each taxonomic group (including drafting preliminary checklists and bibliographies, addressing synonymy, and identifying important holdings of specimens);
producing running checklists, including, as appropriate, common names, synonymy, and status (for example, field-sighting record, specimen-based record, extant taxon, believed-extirpated taxon, most-recent record);
planning field work and determining collection methods;
recommending and adopting structures for specimen label and observational data;
writing an annual report, plan, and budget request;
and determining the benchmarks for and moving each taxonomic group through a series of Levels of Knowledge from inventory of past research to checklists to distribution maps to synthetic natural history profiles.
The efforts of the TWIGs will generate important products, including:
Checklists, including synonymy and common names, as appropriate
Assessments of status of species in the park (e.g., site record, specimen-based record,
Historic record, extirpated, extant, doubtful, abundance)
New species descriptions
New distributional records
Voucher specimens
Field guides, identification aids, interactive keys, drawings, and photographs
Web page profiles
The TWIG Theme includes three subthemes that are distinctive and original elements of this project:
Traditional and structured collecting and observing: the project will encompass two kinds of field work: we term these traditional and structured. The project will place heavy emphasis on expanding both kinds of taxonomic survey in the park.
Traditional collecting and observing is here defined as field survey in its most general sense. Collecting and observing will be accomplished by individual investigators based on their experience, knowledge, time constraints, and methods. ATBI will assist these investigators and capture their records for the accumulating database. ATBI will establish guidelines for the collecting, including methods for promoting spatial resolution. ATBI will also establish guidelines for Bioquests: intense, short-term field experiences organized around particular biological groups.
Structured collecting and observing is here defined as those activities that take place at predetermined sampling points (Biodiversity Reference Points) chosen to represent the diversity of environments and histories of the park's landscape. Structured sampling points will be available to all field workers and will be especially valuable for bulk sampling, particularly sampling done by the public and volunteers. Structured sampling points will be documented by ATBI, including latitude, longitude, soil, geology, topography, habitat and vegetation, and human history.
Sorting centers and bulk sampling: TWIGs will devise methods for bulk sampling for certain groups and set up sampling centers for sorting and distributing them to taxonomic experts. ATBI will establish protocols for the Sorting Centers, including tracking specimens from the park to specialists and museums or other institutions.
Estimating completeness: we will estimate the completeness of the effort for taxonomic groups where appropriate and possible through analysis of species-effort, species-area, and species-time curves. We will track the number of species new to the park and new to science as a function of the number of individuals collected. We will seek to incorporate methods that will allow us to keep a running tally of species inventoried, including species new to science, as well as the locations and times of observation. We will develop and encourage use of methods such as species-area, species-individual, species-time, and species-effort curves so that completeness of the inventory can be assessed. We will test our predictions about completeness through additional field work, using the stratification parameters for the Biodiversity Reference Points. We will estimate richness through methods that compare ratios between well-known and poorly known taxonomic groups. We will seek ways of making the discovery of new species as efficient as possible as a function of the number of individuals or samples analyzed.
Objectives of Theme 2
Objective 2-1: Develop, maintain, and document lists of all taxa in the park, determine the percentage of species new to the park and new to science, and estimate the total number of species in the park and the completeness of the inventory for each taxonomic group; create bibliographies of past research, and index the location of specimens in museums and other institutions
Objective 2-2: Expand and harness taxonomic interest in the park through networking with professional societies, museums, and research centers
Objective 2-3: Define levels of knowledge and products: the stages for moving taxonomic groups from the incomplete checklist to final synthesis
Objective 2-4: Propose Bioquests as appropriate
Objective 2-5: Establish procedures for bulk sampling and for specimen sorting and processing centers for distribution of specimens to TWIG experts
Objective 2-6: Develop methods to estimate inventory completeness and efficiency
* Theme 3: Taxonomic inventory in an ecological and conservation context
Taxonomists typically assess a group across its entire distribution. Ecologists often collect quantitative data on multiple biota but focus on particular study areas. Managers of conservation areas require information on threats to resources, need an ability to monitor and predict change, and must devise management actions to protect or restore natural ecosystems. The ATBI will seek to unite these activities by establishing an explicit ecological and conservation context for taxonomic inventory.
The principle ways that we will accomplish this are: (1) we will tie field observation to location and environmental, historical, and geological factors that affect species distributions; (2) we will seek ways to facilitate the association of observations with community type (the ecological address of species); (3) we will seek ways to build knowledge about species interactions and associations; (4) we will document observation methods and index and archive findings to facilitate future detection of change; (5) where possible, we will link taxonomic inventories to long-term monitoring sites and projects; and (6) we will map species occurrences and model species distributions.
Objectives of Theme 3
Objective 3-1: Using accumulating observations, map known locations, develop methods to predict the distribution of species in the park, and be able to associate species with particular habitats and conditions
Objective 3-2: Determine how the richness and distributions of species (and important subsets of species such as endemics, threatened species, exotic/invasive species, and species with key ecological roles) are related to:
the legacy of past human disturbance (e.g., logging, farming, hydrologic changes, fire, and exotic species invasions);
environmental variables (community structure and composition, elevation, temperature regime, moisture, resource availability, energy flow); and
organism characteristics (e.g., vagility and gene flow).
Objective 3-3: Seek opportunities to link field collecting with monitoring sites and management questions.
* Theme 4: A Geographic Information System (GIS) as an organizing and analysis tool
There are two essential features of all observations of species occurrences: the place and time of observation. Time of observation is straightforward to record (nonetheless, guidelines should be established for the resolution and format of these data); on the other hand, spatial resolution can be difficult in these rugged mountains and yet is a key to associating observations with environmental factors, historical influences, communities, and management concerns. Mapping observations is also a key to modeling and predicting distributions and to understanding any distortions caused by overcollection in accessible areas and undercollection in inaccessible ones. As a result we must work to maximize spatial resolution for observations.
We will use a GIS for a variety of interrelated purposes. We will use a GIS to select a series of Biodiversity Reference Points clustered within larger blocks called Landscape Reference Areas. The Landscape Reference Areas will be approximately 1 km2 tracts that represent the park's characteristic landscapes. The Landscape Reference Areas and Biodiversity Reference Points will cover environmental, historical, and geologic variation in the park and are distributed across its full geography. The establishment of observation areas will enhance our ability to model species distributions. We will use the GIS as a general framework for keeping an ongoing record of all collecting activities and for mapping the locations for species collected and observed. We will also be able to identify over- and undercollected areas and compare more accessible to less accessible sites. We will use the GIS to identify hot spots of diversity and areas sensitive to change. We will use the GIS to model and predict species distributions, as well as to pick areas to test such maps in the field.
Objectives of Theme 4
Objective 4-1: Use GIS to produce a User's Guide to collecting in Great Smoky Mountains National Park to facilitate field work and to maximize cooperation of investigators
Objective 4-2: Use GIS to track field observations, to register and prevent incompatible activities, to identify potential for overlap of activities, to identify under- and overcollected areas, and to select test plots for comparing accessible and inaccessible areas
Objective 4-3: Use GIS to produce a stratification of the park's diverse environments, history, and geology in order to select Biodiversity Reference Points clustered within Landscape Reference Areas
* Theme 5: Involvement of the public, schools, and volunteers
One of the unique features of ATBI is the close involvement envisioned for the public. Volunteers will carry out bulk sampling, undertake taxonomic sorting, provide field assistance to specialists, and participate in intensive taxonomic forays. These volunteers may come for a day or serve for many years. They can be involved individually or as part of school groups, scout groups, clubs, or civic organizations. We seek to interweave the activities of scientists, park service employees, public educators, interpreters, museums, and the public in this project. We seek to train a variety of "parataxonomists"-members of the public who have been train ed to make critical natural history observations and collect specimens for evaluation by specialists.
Volunteers, school children, and parataxonomists: we seek to involve and train nonprofessionals in most aspects of the work, from field collection to specimen sorting and data processing. Younger children will be exposed to the project to excite and inspire them with biological exploration, while older children will be encouraged to participate in ways appropriate to age, experience, and the supervision available.
Dissemination of knowledge to a wide audience: just as the project seeks to involve the public and nonprofessionals, it also seeks to make the results of the project widely available to audiences ranging from schools to universities, and from tourists to amateur naturalists.
Objectives of Theme 5
Objective 5-1: Involve volunteers and non-scientists with inventory, sorting and specimen processing centers, data processing, and administration
Objective 5-2: Work with the Education Committee to make the results of research widely available in a variety of media and for people of all backgrounds, skills, and abilities
Objective 5-3: Work with the Education Committee to develop programs and activities that will provide learning opportunities about biodiversity for a full range of potential participants at all educational levels, including pre-schoolers, primary and secondary students and teachers, college, university, and post-doctoral students, and amateur naturalists and the general public.
Appendix 1: Near term objectives
Establish ATBI Coordinating Office/Information Center in the Park
Running checklists, new discoveries, species new to park and new to science
Archiving of records, correspondence, methods, reports, data
Track field effort, times and locations of expeditions
Promote ATBI through collecting permit system
Incorporate information from Annual Investigator Reports
Coordinate volunteers for field work and sorting center
Determine understudied groups and groups without TWIGs for start-up funding
Secure and allocate support functions (housing, temporary work space, storage facilities (e.g., freezers), microscopes, cameras, bar coding equipment, software, computers, and transportation)
Establish Sorting Center
Develop procedures for specimen processing
Develop the GIS support functions
Draft User's Guide and select Biodiversity Reference Points
Develop standards for spatial resolution
Determine method for tracking field effort and observations
Develop TWIGs
Fund TWIGs for pilot projects
Describe intended products from these projects
Work with database group on standard label data
Determine bulk sampling methods
Determine sorting center operation
Determine distribution of sorted samples
Target groups for consultation on TWIG organization or checklist status
Promote ATBI through professional societies and the Association of Systematic Collections
Solicit and coordinate TWIG plans
Define elements of TWIG plans, including benchmarks for levels of knowledge
Documenting past research and preliminary checklists
Define role of Bioquests
Develop policies, guidelines, and protocols
Develop criteria for participation/membership in ATBI
Develop procedure for interaction with collecting permit system and Annual Investigator Reports
Develop protocols for scoreboard and checklists
Develop protocols for label and observation data
Develop guidelines for information capture to accumulate a history of the project
Develop protocols for bulk sampling, sorting center, and bar coding
Develop guidelines for States of Knowledge benchmarks
Develop guidelines for Bioquests
Develop procedure for annual peer review of the Science Plan
Develop quality control and assurance guidelines for TWIGs
Develop calendar for communications and mailings with all committees
Appendix 2: The User's Guide
The User's Guide will depict and analyze the environmental and historical factors that control the distribution of plants and animals in the Park, including factors important in terrestrial, aquatic, and subterranean ecosystems. Such factors include: elevation; topographic aspect; shape, and position; geology; human and disturbance history; geographic position; and ecosystem structure and composition (e.g., vegetation type). Taxonomy and Collecting Committees, as well as all TWIGs should help define requirements for the User's Guide.
The template of the User's Guide allows the assignment of an Ecological Address to each observation-as important as its geographic address.
The User's Guide will also depict and analyze information on access in order to allow efficient planning of field work, but also, in combination with information on collecting history, to identify over- and under-collected areas.
The User's Guide will also serve as the template for accumulating the history of the ATBI effort by registering field projects. This registration will also help identify areas in which overlap of field work in time or space or both is desirable or to be avoided. The accumulating history will be a running scoreboard of taxonomic groups and the times and places of inventory. The User's Guide will help guide and register both structured and unstructured collecting and observing activities. The User's Guide can be cross referenced to the efforts to document existing checklists and past research efforts as defined by the Taxonomy Committee and TWIGs.
The User's Guide is not just a set of maps and lists, but provides useful summaries and analyses of the diversity of sites and histories in the Park. The underlying GIS database will be maintained for further analysis and queries.
Some version will be accessible through the Web site. The material will also be made available in hardcopy.
Appendix 3: Traditional and Structured Collecting and Observing
Collecting and Observing will involve both Traditional collecting and observing and
Structured collecting and observing
2E Traditional collecting and observing
These are defined as those activities that are not formally oriented around Landscape Reference Areas and Biodiversity Reference Points.
The duration of the activities is anything from days to years and from ongoing to intermittent. These activities also include serendipitous and adhoc observations-anything from chance discoveries by park staff and the visiting public to visits by specialists or university classes. These activities include the relatively intense and short-term field investigations called Bioquests.
Structured collecting and observing
The User's Guide can also be used to publicize specific places in the Park that
Collectively represent the diversity of environments and histories of the whole park and
do so with replication. We suggest two scales for this analysis: Landscape Reference
Areas and Biodiversity Reference Points.
The selection of these areas should be done by running scenarios against the GIS-based information for the Park. One possible scenario is indicated below:
10% of the park would be allocated to Landscape Reference Areas Each Landscape Reference Area would be a representative piece of the Park's Landscape
About 200 ca. 1 km2 Landscape Reference Areas, 5-10 per watershed
These LRAs would be fit to natural boundaries.
These LRAs would include stream sampling stations.
Within each LRA, 5-10 Biodiversity Reference Points would be established.
The Park would thus have some 1,000-2,000 Biodiversity Reference Points
2E
The Biodiversity Reference Points would represent the local gradients and heterogeneity within LRAs and would offer a range of local observation
points to investigators.
The User's Guide would describe the LRAs at higher resolution than for the rest of the landscape-e.g., a high resolution vegetation map would be
made for each LRA from aerial images.
The Biodiversity Reference Points would be monumented in the field.
The User's Guide would indicate what collecting activities were permissible at or in the vicinity of the Biodiversity Reference Points.
Quantitative Sampling at Biodiversity Reference Points
Documentation of field activities is important for all activities, whether structured or not. For example, it will be important to know how long an investigator spent in the field, what trails and places were inventoried, at what season, time of day and weather conditions the observations covered, sampling methods, and so on.
Beyond the capture of this information, species lists and estimates of diversity can be made quantitatively meaningful if some portion of the effort goes into the construction of species-area, species-time, species-effort, or species-individual curves. By repeating methods in the future and by rebuilding these curves, we can track chang es in diversity even when the inventory for the Park as a whole is incomplete.
Appendix 4: Annual Calendar for the Science Committee
January Present Annual Revision of Science Plan for Adoption by the Board of Directors,
Along with Peer Reviews and Responses
Present Annual Budget Request to the Board of Directors
February Solicit Proposals from TWIGs and ATBI Coordinating Office
Make Funding Awards, based on approved budget
October Solicit Annual Reports from TWIGs, from ATBI Coordinating Office, and from project participants
TWIGs should report:
Expanding involvement of taxonomists and professional societies
Assessment of the current knowledge about each group
Checklist status
Proposed field work and collection methods
Common label and observational database elements
Budget requests
Products generated
Other accomplishments
Problems and limitations
Quality Control and Assurance Guidelines
Source and status of names on checklist
Record precision indicators for location
Guidelines for label data
Collection and observation methods
Solicit Review of Current Year Science Plan by TWIGs, ATBI Coordinating
Office, and other project participants
December Present Science Plan at the Annual Meeting
Meet with Database and Education Committees to coordinate plans
Solicit Peer Review of Science Plan
ATBI Science Plan - Draft May 1999
| Discover Life in America | Science | Inventory Design | Peter White - 26 August, 1999 |