Encyclopedia plans to bring all species to life on Web
WASHINGTON – In a whale-size project, the world’s scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth’s 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown today in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world’s leading scientific institutions and universities. The project will take about 10 years to complete.
“It’s an interactive zoo,” said James Edwards, who will be the encyclopedia’s executive director. Edwards currently helps run a global biodiversity information system.
The MacArthur and Sloan foundations have given a total $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort. The encyclopedia will be free and accessible to everyone.
The pages can be adjusted so that they provide useful information for both a schoolchild and a research biologist alike, with an emphasis on encouraging “citizen-scientists” to add their sightings. While amateurs can contribute in clearly marked side pages, the key detail and science parts of the encyclopedia will be compiled and reviewed by experts.
“It could be a very big leap in the way we do science,” said Cristian Samper, acting secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, one of seven museums, universities and labs to launch the encyclopedia. “This is a project that is so big, not even the Smithsonian, could do it by itself. It is a global effort.”
As new species are discovered, they’ll be added, scientists say. They estimate that Earth actually has 8 million species or so, but only one-quarter of them have been identified and named as separate species.
After that, long-gone species – the fossil world – will be added.
“If we don’t include dinosaurs, we’ll have lost 6-year-old boys,” Edwards said.