ATBI 2/7 NSF proposal

[Daniel Janzen]

ATBI WORKSHOP, 16-18 April 1993 Part 2 of 7


PROPOSAL TO NSF FOR FUNDING OF THE WORKSHOP



A workshop to explore the feasibility, protocols and costs of an
                "all-taxa biodiversity inventory"
_____________________________________________________________________


A.  Need for such a workshop.

National biodiversity is a significant portion of a nation's natural raw
materials for intellectual and economic development.  In some tropical
biodiverse countries, this biodiversity may be one of the very few
remaining primary natural resources that has neither been eliminated nor
largely developed.

The conservation of tropical biodiversity involves saving it, finding out
what it is, and non-damaging use of it.  This workshop examines a portion
of the second workshop - finding out what it is.  This is a major and
proactive step toward non-destructive use.  It is an act set within the
boundaries of what has been saved (and what may be saved).

There has been a major shift in the biodiversity research climate.  A
distinctive characteristic of tropical wildland biodiversity is that we no
longer have the luxury of planning and conducting our scientific and
social interaction with it at our traditional rate and form.  For much of
the tropics, even where large wildland areas have been set aside, there is
only a temporary respite.  This respite has been bought through cash
donors, politically convincing discussions, "good citizen" behavior, etc.
However, with world tropical populations doubling in the next 15-30 years
(depending on the country) and personal aspirations for more resources
running unabated throughout the world, the conserved wildlands have at
best 10-20 years to demonstrate that they can be very serious contributors
to the national cash and intellectual economy. That is to say, conserved
wildlands are a kind of land use that needs desperately to demonstrate
very, very fast that it too can be as productive as are the other kinds of
land use, albeit with a different list of products.

There appears to be an immediate need for a demonstration that a
biodiverse wildland can be set up for extensive and intensive
non-destructive use.  An all-taxa inventory could be a basic preparatory
step for a very large number of kinds of potential users - not only from
within the science/research community but also from society at large.
However, an all-taxa inventory for a significantly large site cannot be
done in 1-3 years, no matter how much money is poured into it.  On the
other hand, a period as long as 20 years is more time than is available
today.  This means that the first all-taxa site inventories should be far
along in less than a decade, so as to serve as pilot projects for others
sites that are today not yet ready, but will be so in a matter of 5-10
years.

A second major shift in the biodiversity research climate is the
recognition by policy-makers that high-quality biodiversity research is
expensive, and simultaneously it is a serious investment in the technology
of biodiversity management - biotechnology, in other words.  If large
packages of new resources are to be wisely spent in this new social
sector, the practitioners need to move rapidly to construct the
decision-making processes that will spend it sufficiently wisely to cause
society to continue to invest.

These two new changes in the social climate of science imply something
that has always been beneficial in science.  Inventory science and
technology needs to scrutinize its protocols, methodologies, rationales,
goals, hypotheses, and traditions so as to be certain that it really is
taking science where it thinks it is going.  Is biodiversity science
really taking into account the new opportunities, understandings, and
questions generated by post-60's biological science and society in
general?  Does it really build on the strengths of the developing tropical
countries where most of the world's biodiversity is found?  Is it really
aimed at user-sensitive inventory, with full recognition of the full sweep
of the very diverse array of actual and potential biodiversity users?

This workshop, as well as an all-taxa inventory of a site, is an exercise
in the integration of many extant fields, subdisciplines and social
sectors.  The workshop is aimed at devising a psychological and technical
infrastructure that will achieve the goal of the conservation of tropical
biodiversity into perpetuity through non-destructive use throughout
society.


B.  The specific purpose of this workshop.

This workshop is the first of three steps to explore the possibility of an
overall strategy to carry out an all-taxa inventory of a biodiverse site.

These three steps are to
     1) attempt to devise a general (non-site-specific) working strategy
for an all-taxa biodiversity inventory of a single large biodiverse site in a
finite time framework, then
      2) conduct a second (and much larger on-site) workshop to apply this
general plan - if any be - to a specific site, and then
      3) conduct such an inventory of a specific site, and use the
experiences and results to
        a) modify the general working strategy,
        b) serve as a pilot project for other simultaneous and subsequent
all-taxa biodiversity inventories, and
        c) show the world that the results are useful to society.

The second and third steps may be replicated or repeated sequentially
throughout the world, depending on funding, interest, and rate at which
sites become logistically and sociologically prepared to be subjected to
an all-taxa inventory.


C.  Why attempt to devise a strategy for an all-taxa inventory of a single
site?

1) To create an overall "known universe" against which virtually any
sampling, monitoring and censusing methodology for biodiversity can be
"ground truthed" for one to many species, for one to many major taxa.

2) To attract major public attention and education activities to the
technical and commercial opportunities of wildland biodiversity
development and management.

3) To demonstrate to society that even very biodiverse systems can be
"catalogued", and hence rendered usable, for reasonable amounts of energy
and money, and in a reasonably short time.

4) To generate from one place an enormous organized body of specimens,
samples, and associated data about biodiversity for users from all
sectors.  The sheer mass of this resource, as well as its complexity,
should cause - through its presence and its availability - society to come
up with many new uses for it.

5) To develop the methodologies for managing the above-mentioned
extremely complex and interrelated information.

6) To insure examination of all taxa, and not just those that happen to
have caught the attention of particular scientists or have been central to
public appreciation of biodiversity.

7) To derive maximum benefit from the synergisms created by specialists on
different taxa working side-by-side and with the same organisms, habitats
and ecosystems.

8) To derive economy of scale benefits for logistics, administration, and
taxonomic specimen and information processing.

9) To explicitly destroy the widespread feeling that biodiverse sites are
too complex, too time-consuming, and too expensive to fully understand
and get into usable order.


D. How is an all-taxa inventory related to other inventory efforts?

While this workshop is the first to be focused on developing a strategy
for an all-taxa biodiversity inventory of a single site, it is imbedded in
and reinforcing of the larger process initiated more than a decade ago
with the 1979 Jalapa meeting on strategies of tropical site and taxon
selection for intensive and extensive biodiversity study.

This larger process - to sample, monitor and inventory a diverse network
of biodiverse sites for a multitude of scientific, social and commercial
reasons - is most recently manifest in the the 1-3 October 1992
IUBS-SCOPE-UNESCO workshop at La Selva, Costa Rica, the UNEP-sponsored
Biodiversity Country Studies in late 1991-early 1992, a variety of
biodiversity inventory proposals submitted to the Global Environmental
Facility of the World Bank, and the upcoming 11-15 January 1993
International Workshop on biodiversity surveys, inventories and data
organization to be held at the Smithsonian Institution.  Quite strikingly,
the June 15-18, 1992 Michigan Microbial Biodiversity Workshop called
explicitly for full inclusion of microbes in all-taxa inventories by
"macrobiologists" for a wide variety of synergistic reasons.


E.  What are the major questions to address in this workshop?

By encouraging scientists from many different taxonomic and electronic
information management traditions to think together on the following
questions, the workshop hopes to synergistically lead to unapparent
solutions.  The workshop also hopes to recognize which questions can be
readily addressed by ideas and policies already developed for one
majortaxon, and which have taxon-specific unique replies.

1) All taxa?  While a policy decision might be made to include all species
in a site inventory, a major question remains as to the degree to which
this is possible, practical and cost-feasible for each of the higher taxa
in a site.  At least two major options to explore are
  a) restricting all-taxa inventory to ever-smaller subsets of the site
for higher taxa of ever-greater difficulty, and
  b) decreasing the thoroughness of the site inventory for increasingly
difficult higher taxa.   Other options should appear in the workshop.

2) What are the criteria to determine how large and how diverse an
inventory site should be or can be?  While this question might be answered
differently for different taxa, an all-taxa inventory implies that smaller
sub-sites would be contained within the larger site rather than in other
places.

3) What is an appropriate balance of anthropogenic and "undisturbed"
habitats for the inventory site?

4) What is a sufficient level of logistic, administrative, and scientific
in-country professional and paraprofessional development at a site to be
able to achieve an all-taxa inventory?  What are the desirable geographic,
sociological and habitat traits that define a site to be appropriate for
an all-taxa inventory?

5) What are the financial and intellectual costs of carrying out an
all-taxa inventory, group by group and over a range of habitat sizes and
complexities?

6) What are the best ways to balance a restricted budget covering
heterogeneity such as
  a) those taxa or processes where a very complete inventory will be
exceptionally expensive,
  b) those taxa where getting the taxonomy
particularly clean is execeptionally expensive, and c) those taxa where
with only a slight increase in budget a great return could be had in
completeness, taxonomic cleanliness, or product development for greater
utility.

7)  In what ways can an all-taxa inventory be shaped so as to
non-destructively maximize the attraction of new money to the inventory
process, rather than force it to compete with traditional science funding?

8) What can an all-taxa inventory project do to encourage user-financed
add-ons not covered by the basic inventory budget?

9) How can the inventory be structured so as attract a multitude of users
who will make use of the logistics, ideas, information, stimulation, etc.
emanating from the core project?  How can these "add-ons" be used to
reinforce, replicate, and broaden inventory actions, as well as generate
actual inventory data itself?

10) How complete is complete?  More difficult, how does completeness
at the species level vary with time and energy invested for different
major taxa?  A key element here will be the interaction between major
taxa.  The conditions of space, budget and time will also be key elements.

11) Where the species-level inventory is already complete for a site for
some major taxon, how can that information used to speed or facilitate the
inventory of other major taxa?

12) Where the species-level inventory is already complete for a site
for some major taxon, how should subsequent effort be partitioned among
habitats, genes, DNA, chemicals, life stages, inter-specific interactions,
and other kinds of diversity for that taxon?

13) How best to deal with incomplete taxonomy?  The options of
reference collections and local (non-Latin binomial) taxonomies may be
explored as supplements to intensified site-specific taxonomic and
cladisitic efforts.

14) How best to deal with orphan taxa?  A major element of discussion
could be the options of attracting taxonomists that specialize on other
groups, versus targetted training of novices.

15) What are appropriate strategies for integrating the actual execution
of an inventory with the conservation, administrative, commercial,
touristic, educational, etc. activities that occur (and will increase) at
the site of the inventory?

16) How is a major site inventory to best interact with and reinforce
in-country science, wildland administration, and society such that the
project is fully mutualistic with these processes and becomes a permanent
on-going portion of local society?

17) What are the kinds of non-taxon-oriented background (GIS, aerial
photos, physical parameter data bases, etc.) that should be sought or
generated as essential logistic tools and science synergists?

18) What characteristics of GIS and data basing in biodiversity
information management require special attention in an all-taxa inventory?
How can the primary information best be internally pooled, merged,
cross-referenced, etc. yet simultaneously retain its full
out-compatibility with taxon-oriented GIS and data bases maintained
already by extant managers of biodiversity information scattered
throughout the world and only sometimes linked to the project through
networks?

19) How best to address the apparent conflict between monographic broad
geography taxonomic work and site-specific inventories?  How can a
site-specific inventory facilitate monographic studies?

20) What is a viable process for within-project decisions as to
  a) which difficult processes to postpone until after the time period of
the primary project,
  b) which to aggressively "sub-contract" off to processes outside of the
primary project, and
  c) which to keep in the primary project by putting more resources behind
them?

21) What is the nature of the time constraints on the inventory
process?  What is the best mechanism for setting a minimal realistic time
period for the primary inventory process, for setting the timing of the
major project milestone?  What are mechanisms for adjusting the
sub-inventory of each major taxon to a single time period, primarily
through adjusting the intensity and form of that sub-inventory?

22) What are the diverse ways and timings to best move the primary data
from the project into other systems external to the project?

In addition to the above questions, it is assumed that addressing
these questions will lead to a host of new ones that will likewise be
addressed by the workshop.  Additionally, it is clear that many aspects of
these questions have already been addressed, and will be addressed by
other biodiversity workshops.  A major attempt will be made to learn from
these efforts before and during the workshop, with stress on understanding
how they need to be adjusted in response to an all-taxa inventory.


F. What are the major questions to receive less emphasis in this
workshop?

1.  Products and users.  The workshop will take as a given that there
is a diverse array of products and users (including the science community)
associate with an all-taxa inventory of a biodiverse site.  These products
and users will be extensively discussed in the 11-15 January 1993 workshop
at the Smithsonian. However, the all-taxa workshop will be especially
sensitive to formatting, information management patterns, sampling rigor,
sampling consistency and the needs of the users of sample information when
considering the workshop questions.

2.  Networking.  An all-taxa site inventory is of necessity heavily
focused inward.  This workshop will take as a given that a world-level
network of inventory sites and processes is in motion, and therefore not
dwell on networking.  On the other hand, this workshop will be very aware
that an all-taxa site is a major node in a world network, and make every
attempt to factor this into questions and analyses; it will also be very
sensitive to the use of standardized methodologies being applied
throughout networks.  The site will become a known universe against which
sample techniques can be calibrated, offer quality comparative data on
biodiversity and sampling methods for other sites, and be a major user of
data from other sites.

3. Are inventories useful?  The workshop will take as a given that
biodiversity inventories are a major technology of biodiversity use and
management, and therefore not dwell on lengthy justification of inventory
in contrast to other activities.  The workshop also takes as a given that
the significant increases in biodiversity funding over the decade we are
entering will include massive new support for inventory as well as for the
other processes associated with biodiversity management - systematics,
ecology, environmental monitoring, biodiversity prospecting, etc.

4. Inventory to simply know how many species there are in a site?  This
workshop is not being convened to fine-tune sample methods to determine
how many species there are.  It is assumed that there are many, and that
species counts will be automatic byproducts of other more useful
parameters such as knowing where they are, what they are, who they are
related to, what natural history do they display, how do they interact,
etc.

5. What site or sites should be the first to be subject to all-taxa
inventory?  This April workshop does not intend to fine-tune the general
strategy to any specific site or choose such a site (or sites).  Choice of
sites needs to be thought out and executed by the custodians of such sites
and by the executors/funders of such an inventory.

6. Marine inventory?  The entire process discussed here is clearly
appropriate for a marine site, but the persons involved, the technologies,
and the social setting are all sufficiently different that it is viewed as
preferable to specialize on the terrestrial (and fresh water) habitats for
this workshop.  At least one marine inventory-oriented person will be
invited to contribute and serve as liason between marine inventory
planning efforts.


G.  Timing of the workshop.

April is the earliest that funding can be obtained from NSF (if all goes
well).  The PI is locked into Costa Rica from 24 April to 30 August by
virtue of a multitude of long-established committments (though he can and
plans to continue to work intensively on preparing the manuscript from the
workshop while in Costa Rica).  This leaves 16-18 April as the window of
opportunity.  A Friday+weekend has been chosen as the time easiest for
participants to be able to escape from their formal work obligations.


H.  Location of the workshop.

The Biology Department of the University of Pennsylvania has offered its
facilities to the workshop as a contribution to tropical biodiversity
conservation. Three copying machines, telephones and FAX will be available
within a few meters of the meeting rooms (classrooms and laboratories).
Participants will stay at the Sheraton University City, three blocks from
the meeting site.


I. The workshop process.

The workshop rationale is to gather a group of scientists who are intimate
with inventory problems and methodologies for "their" specific groups, and
have them think in unison about the process, advantages, disadvantages,
and products of an "all-taxa" inventory for a single site.  Simultaneously
they should apply the same thinking process - jointly with some
biodiversity information management specialists - to the management and
packaging of the very large (and diverse) pulse of biodiversity
information (specimens and data) that will result.

In the three-month pre-workshop period, a skeleton framework will be
developed through workshop participant responses to the 22 questions posed
earlier and to new thoughts.  As much as possible, this skeleton will also
be fleshed out with multiple alternatives and additives.  It is expected
that all workshop participants will come to the workshop prepared to
comment indetail.  This workshop is not one, however, for attendee
presentations or "talks".

In the pre-workshop period correspondence, the 22 questions will be
gradually grouped into four natural clusters.  The first four half days
(two morning and two afternoons) will be spent on these four clusters of
questions, with two different group leaders for each half day.  All
members of the workshop will work together on all questions.  The PI will
chair the meeting.

The evenings for these two days will be dedicated to opportunistic
discussion of particularly knotty questions by a subgroup assigned to
them, and organized opportunistically as the daytime discussions move
along.  In other words, for example, if the topic of what are acceptable
ways to temporarily substitute a numbering system for Latin binomials for
the inventory vouchers becomes too convoluted, obstruse, emotional,
obstrepterous, etc., then at that moment the 2-5 most involved persons
will constitute a subgroup to devote the evening to resolving the
question.

One person will be invited to the workshop for the express purpose of
maintaining an ongoing summarization of questions and conclusions.

The third day will be devoted to going back through the entire framework
that is then more or less agreed upon, fleshing out details, making
further alterations, changing importance valuations, etc.  This will be
done in the context of the entire group having a much better focus on the
objectives, constraints, possibilities, opportunities, etc.  Again,
seemingly impossible subject matter will be consigned to discussion and
resolution by "special interest groups" in that evening.

Participants will leave the results of the workshop in the hands of a 3-5
person writing committee with the PI as a member, but not necessarily the
chair.  Within two months this committee will prepare a draft manuscript
and circulate it to all workshop participants and a long list of others as
drawn up by the workshop on the last day.  Participants and others will
have one month to return commentary to 1-2 members of the writing
committee, who will incorporate these comments to the best of their
ability into the final manuscript within one month.  This detailed and
unabridged report will then be published in hard copy for wide circulation
(method still being discussed), along with short summary versions in
appropriate journals and electronically (again, to be suggested by the
workshop membership).

The workshop report will be co-authored by all participants except for
observers who declare themselves to be ineligible, with the 1-2 senior
authors being the two who do the final editing, followed by alphabetical
listing of the others.


J. Potential participants

Many persons have expressed a strong interest in being participants in
this workshop and nominated many others.  However, to reach a concensus
(and orderly disagreement) in a process where it is imperative that
members of very diverse disciplines contribute, the number of invited
participants should be a maximum of about 34 individuals.  The final list
of participants will not be made until after the 11-15 January 1993 US
biodiversity workshop.  However, Table 1 lists persons that would be
highly appropriate (and nearly all have stated a strong interest in
attending).


K.  Budget.

 1.  Air or train fares for 34 participants, estimated at
        a.  10 local (Philadelphia-Washington axis),
             $100 each                                  $1,000.00
        b.  17 national + Canada, $500 each             $8,500.00
        c.   5 far international, average of $1000 each $5,000.00

 2.  Miscellaneous cab fares $40/person (airport
              and train station to university)          $1,360.00

 3.  Hotel rooms for 4 nights for 34 participants,
              $89/room for 25 rooms                     $8,900.00

 4.  Food for 4 days for 34 participants,
              $50/person                                $6,800.00

                              Total direct participant costs    $31,560

 5.  FAX, postage, telephone and meeting
               office supplies                          $2,000.00

 6.  1/2 time Departmental Assistant/Secretary,
               1 month                                  $1,109.56

                               Total direct costs               $34,669.56

 7.   University of Pennsylvania overhead on non-participant
                costs, 62.5% of $34,669.56              $1,943.48

                                        Total request           $36,61304

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