The U.S. Geological Survey’s NBII Program is offering this grant to advance biological informatics for wildlife disease data and information transfer.

The NBII is a collaborative effort among federal, state, local, agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities, and private sector groups to provide an integrated gateway to biological data and information. NBII is used by land managers, researchers, decision makers, educators, and the general public for many purposes that include land-use decisions, scientific research, policymaking, and general information needs of its users.

The NBII provides the nation with a mechanism for accessing the vast amount of existing disparate biological and natural resources data, information products, and analytical tools that support and enhance science-based decision-making. Using enterprise portal technology, the NBII helps provide an integrating framework for making these data and information accessible. In 2001, the NBII program was authorized to establish a series of regional and thematic Nodes throughout the country with the objective of providing data and information relevant to those areas available that support efforts of federal, non federal, university, non-profit, and citizens of each Node.

The NBII is looking for collaborative opportunities with a CESU partner to increase the availability and usefulness of biological and natural resources related scientific data and information by developing or enhancing them through visualization products, tools, models, web based applications, and/or semantic systems in support of the development of the NBII’s Wildlife Disease Information Node. Areas of interest include:

• Research and select media resources for the WDIN Wildlife Disease News Digest/Global Wildlife Disease News Map
• Research, select and catalog web resources for the WDIN website and NBII portal
• Work with existing WDIN partners and collaborators on development of new productions, as well as identify potential new partnerships.
• Work with the staff of EcoHealth101.org, to create new contact and tools for the website.
• Provide programming for development and enhancement of the infrastructure tools for the WDIN Wildlife Health Monitoring Network.
• Present WDIN products and research at meetings and other professional societies
• Provide access to WDIN products and services to researchers, decision makers and the public.
• Examples of products and projects mentioned above can be found at http://www.nbii.gov/wildlifedisease