NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science ( NCCOS) conduct a wide variety of
coastal environmental monitoring and research studies that generate invaluable taxonomic
reference materials and corresponding data sets on the biodiversity and abundances
of marine benthic
species. The purpose of the National Benthic Inventory (NBI)
is to capture this information and make it available as a readily accessible resource
to support the needs of other related programs dealing with important coastal management,
research, and educational issues. The
NBI consists of a dynamic quantitative database on benthic species distributions and
a corresponding taxonomic voucher collection of preserved benthic specimens obtained from studies
conducted by
NOAA and partnering institutions in estuarine and other coastal areas around
the country.
The quantitative database provides information on benthic species abundances by species and location, thus
providing a basis for addressing important management and research questions, such
as "what are the incidence and patterns of occurrence of a particular species of
interest," or "what are the overall composition and diversity of species assemblages
within any particular region of interest. Other key objectives and potential uses
of the NBI are:
- to provide a source of information for assessing patterns in marine biodiversity;
- to provide input data for evaluating biological responses to sediment-associated
stressors, and for developing new diagnostic tools to enhance such analyses;
- to serve as a source of biological observations in support of long-term integrative
ocean observing systems; and
- to provide a basis for monitoring the incidence and patterns of invasive species
in marine and coastal waters (taking advantage of the fact that such a comprehensive
database includes species from most all known marine invertebrate phyla, and thus
will be broadly representative).
The NBI is also a
data source for the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), a web-based provider of world-wide geo-referenced data
on marine species. OBIS is the
information component of the Census of Marine Life (CoML), a 10-year initiative
involving more than 45 nations to assess and explain the diversity, distribution,
and abundance of life in the oceans. OBIS
includes information on all types of marine species (plants, algae, protozoans,
invertebrates, and vertebrates) from various parts of the world. The link to the
NBI provides OBIS with an additional source of data on marine benthic invertebrate species from
studies conducted throughout the United States by NCCOS and its partners. The link also
provides an opportunity for the
NBI, in serving as a source of biological observations, to become an integral
component of a larger integrative ocean observing system with access to a broader
range of species and geographic regions. Users of OBIS include scientists, marine resource managers and policy
makers, educators, students, and the public.
The companion taxonomic reference collection consists of representative specimens
from studies contained in the
NBI which are catalogued by species, geographic region, and investigation.
The identified specimens comprising the collection are used routinely as a research
tool for processing new
benthic samples and for continuous verification of species identifications
in various coastal assessment studies. The collection also serves as a source of
material to capture in digitized photographs for publications, educational outreach,
species calibrations and other collaborative interactions with related programs
involving marine benthic
taxonomy. Specimens from the collection are available for loan to research and educational
institutions for the use of the resident research staff. For more information regarding
collection loans please
click here (please remove ".nospam").
Both the NBI and the
reference collection are maintained in the benthic ecology laboratory of the
Coastal Ecology Program at NCCOS's Center for Coastal Environmental
Health and Biomolecular Research (CCEHBR) in Charleston, SC.