Development of a computer information system for wildlife conservation in

Louisiana, with a prototype system for fishes

Henry L. Bart Jr. and Nelson E. RiosTulane University Museum of Natural

HistoryBelle Chasse, Louisiana

&Frank L. Pezold, III

College of Science and TechnologyTexas A&M University Corpus Christi, Texas

Funding provided the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

Objectives• Create a prototype Louisiana Wildlife Conservation

Network for fish data linking natural history collection and Louisiana State wildlife databases

• Georeference data in the University of Louisiana- Monroe Fish Collection and all records from GBIF for species identified at risk in Louisiana.

• Develop an online portal to query and map networked data for the purposes of conservation

• Develop an online database to capture Louisiana Scientific Collecting Permit data

• Utilize the Louisiana Wildlife Conservation Network to analyze trends in occurrence and abundance for Louisiana's threatened and endangered inland fishes over time & model critical habitat areas

Use CasesThe Louisiana Fish & Wildlife

Conservation portal may be used to:1) Analyze trends in occurrence and

abundance of Louisiana’s rare, threatened and endangered fishes over time

2) Model known and potential critical habitat of all rare and protected fishes

3) Analyze changes in land use and land cover in areas supporting rare and protected fishes

4)Identify areas and/or species in need of greater monitoring and sampling

TAMUFMNHULMTUMNH TNHC LADWF LNHPPermit DB

Louisiana Wildlife Conservation portal

XML over HTTP (DwC)

XML over HTTP

End Users

Natural History Collections State Wildlife Databases

HTML over HTTP

uBio Name Bank

XML over HTTP

Data Entry portal

Darwin Core (DwC v1.20)• XML Schema designed to facilitate the exchange of information

about the geographic occurrence of species and the existence of specimens in collections

• Schema used to serve natural history collections data

DateLastModifiedInstitutionCodeCollectionCodeCatalogNumber ScientificNameBasisOfRecordKingdomPhylumClassOrderFamilyGenusSpeciesSubspeciesScientificNameAuthor

CountyLocalityLongitudeLatitudeCoordinatePrecisionMinimumElevationMaximumElevationMinimumDepthMaximumDepthSexPreparationTypeIndividualCountPreviousCatalogNumber RelationshipTypeRelatedCatalogItemNotes

IdentifiedByYearIdentifiedMonthIdentifiedDayIdentifiedTypeStatusCollectorNumberFieldNumberCollectorYearCollectedMonthCollectedDayCollectedJulianDayTimeOfDayContinentOceanCountryStateProvince

Capturing Scientific Permit Data

Data Cleaning & Enhancement

1) Correction of lower administrative units

2) Georeferencing3) Taxonomic resolution4) Geospatial enhancements (hucs &

eco regions)

Georeferencing Legacy DataImport

Locality Data

Batch Process via GEOLocate

(ver. 3.11)

Verify & Correct via GEOLocateExport Data

SpecimenDatabase

Collaborative Georeferencing

Taxonomic Name Resolution

• Universal Biological Indexer and Organizer (uBio)

• Synonym and common name resolution services

• Unresolved names marked for review and examined by graduate students

Web PortalPublic, web-based interface through which

fish and wildlife biologists access specimen data1) Caches data from DiGIR providers2) Textual & geospatial query and

visualization3) Provides access to “Species Pages” 4) Web-based interface to allow Scientific

Collecting Permit holders to enter collecting data

Conservation summaries produced by graduate students for each of the rare, threatened or endangered species within Louisiana

Species Profiles

Future Directions• Expand the LFWCN system to coverage that

includes the entire United States• Expand the number of data providers• Make key features of the system (species

distribution and niche modeling, species profile modeling, and population sampling and abundance trends analysis) dynamic, so that users of the system can generate all of these models on the fly as new data are encountered

• Improved taxonomic resolution via geography and co-occurring species

• Notification Services – Alert me when new records of Redfish in Bayou St. John are collected; Send me a monthly report on collecting activities in Caddo Parish