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Diving for data: counting fish numbers — as here in Florida — will provide one source of input. Credit: AP/BOB CARE

US efforts to create a Biodiversity Observatory Network (BON) are gathering speed as part of a biocomplexity initiative launched earlier this year by Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The proposed network of up to 20 sites across the country would serve as ‘weather stations’ to monitor ecological and systematic factors over time, link data through computer systems, and compare findings to historic collections at museums and universities.

The BON proposal is part of a plan for a National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a broader monitoring system on which the NSF's governing body, the National Science Board, was briefed last month. Next week, the NSF will hold its latest workshop on BON in San Francisco, where scientists will try to resolve different approaches to biodiversity research.

Although funding amounts have not yet been proposed, federal officials say that BON could require budget requests of $30 million to $50 million a year for three years to create the network's infrastructure, plus five-year operational grants of more than $500,000 a year for each site, and $5 million to $20 million annually for associated research grants.

Colwell has requested $50 million for the biocomplexity initiative for the 2000 fiscal year, and intends to expand it further thereafter. But it is not clear that the Republican Congress, which killed a previous administration effort to found a National Biological Survey, will support such an expansion of support for ecology and systematic biology.

BON would be one of the most ambitious initiatives to date by the NSF's division of environmental biology, part of the directorate of biological sciences. The BON sites would be at locations owned by governments, universities or non-profit organizations.

Attempts to use the effort to survey private lands could stir political objections. Conservatives in the Congress have opposed funding for such studies, on the grounds that they encroach on private property rights.

“BON is a test component of NEON,” says Bruce P. Hayden, professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, who serves as the NSF's director of the division of environmental biology until July.

The NSF has sponsored two workshops on BON, with the third due to take place next week at the California Academy of Sciences. This is expected to address what one participant calls “the bond of marriage of ecology and systematics”. Ecologists and systematists — who collect and classify specimens — “aren't ready to go to the altar yet”, notes one observer, adding that there is “a contentious” debate over their different approaches.

BON would record changes in the biota, reflect the chemical compositions of substances and assist in describing the origins of human diseases. The NSF hopes to combine the systematists' collecting capabilities with the ecologists' long-term analyses to produce an evolving picture of biodiversity at the sites. “If we can't work together, this thing won't float,” says Hayden.

Many institutions and scientists are already involved in planning initiatives to lay the groundwork for BON, which NSF officials describe as moving at an “unprecedented” speed. Depending on funding, requests for proposals related to BON could come next year, say officials. For example, a consortium is forming to position its members to play key roles if funding is forthcoming.

Hatched in December at a conference on biodiversity modelling in San Diego, the nascent consortium involves universities in the United States and Mexico, museums in the United States and Canada, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the NSF's 21-site Long Term Ecological Research Network, based at the University of New Mexico, and the National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis in Santa Barbara.

Leonard ‘Kris’ Krishtalka, director of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and a leader in forming the consortium, says the group is using an NSF grant that involves many of the same institutions as “a springboard” to be ready for BON. “No one institution has the mission, infrastructure and experience to do what is necessary,” he says. “Solving the complexity of research riddles of biodiversity is going to require synthesis and collaboration.”