Biodiversity Database

Monitoring and conservation of biological diversity, analysis of its trends over various temporal scales have become a global concern. However, variety in methods and sampling techniques, small amount of observational data and lack of unified species check lists lead to controversy in estimation of the marine ecosystem evolution tendency. Moreover, in compassion with other fields of oceanography there is a lack of the specialized information or database management systems that give a possibility to upload, quality check, analyze and present trends in biodiversity and related data. Within the frameworks of the GEF Caspian Environment Program, the specialized Caspian Sea Biodiversity Information System (CaspBIS) dedicated to solve this task has been developed. The key objective of the Caspian Biodiversity Information System (CaspBIS) is to be able to store biological data in a way which allows the user to extract subsets (temporal, spatial or by species) in order to examine trends (in species presence, community composition and abundance) over time. The main value of the database is to assist users to assess whether or not changes are taking place, and in what direction any changes take.