Mountain biodiversity data mining

Coordinator: Eva Spehn
Period: 2006 - 2009
Status: closed

Data mining has become an exciting field of research in many fields of natural, medical, social, and engineering sciences, and has led to considerable progress in our understanding of certain phenomena. The mining of (mountain) biodiversity data bases offers promising perspectives as well and GMBA is committed to supporting efforts and initatives towards the application of rigorous mining methods to biodiversity data.

Electronic biological archives provide novel avenues towards testing evolutionary and ecological theory across the world's mountain ranges. The separation of global from regional environmental conditions along elevational transects provides new perspectives for the comprehension of adaptation in mountain biota. Similarly, information on rock chemistry and mountain topography offers test conditions for edaphic drivers of biodiversity and species radiation and in an evolutionary context across a suit of geographical scales.

Activities

• Kick-off meeting on mountain biological data base mining, 2006, Kazbegi (Republic of Georgia). This meeting capitalized on the expertise from different fields of biology and data base experts.
• Synthesis book on data mining for global trends in mountain biodiversity published in 2009. This book demonstrates how to harness the scientific power of biological databases for furthering ecological and evolutionary theory.