Museum collections data and online mapping applications - A new resource for land managers

摘要

The Mountain and Plains Spatio-Temporal Database Informatics Initiative (MaPSTeDI) is a collaborative effort between the University of Colorado Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and Denver Botanic Gardens to convert their separate collections into one distributed biodiversity database and research toolkit using online mapping applications. The 3 participating museums are all located just east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and have extensive natural history collections data covering the southern and central Rockies and adjacent plains. MaPSTeDI's efforts will result in an online mapping application with access to over 200,000 georeferenced specimens. Once this application is in production, MaPSTeDI will provide access to valuable data that can be used by researchers for biodiversity analyses and land use planning over a 6-state region that includes Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.