Eesti teaduse infrastruktuuride teekaart - ETIS

LOODUS- JA TEHNIKATEADUSED | NATURAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING 51NATURAL HISTORY ARCHIVES ANDINFORMATION NETWORK (NATARC)The Natural History Archives — collections of protists, plants, fungi, animals androcks — document the diversity of the planet’s living and nonliving nature as well asits development in time and space. An integrated infrastructure will be created,comprising natural history archives and a digital biodiversity archive. The collectionswill be accessible for scientists, whereas the users of the database also encompassenvironmentalists, teachers, politicians and others.Collections are the bedrock of biologicalclassification; other strandsof the biological sciences, as well asa comprehensive education in lifesciences, are directly lying on it. Naturalhistory collections also play an importantrole in solving various practicalissues, from monitoring environmentalchanges, analysis of the spread ofnon-indigenous species, organizing ofenvironmental preservation to study ofmineral resources. The knowledge thatmankind possesses about the surroundingenvironment is modest to this day,both globally and in Estonia. First of all,this is due to the extraordinarily largediversity of the natural world – it isestimated that the number of currentlyexisting species in the world amountsup to several tens of millions. Once weadd the habitats or ecosystems, genes,extinct species, etc. of these species’,the amount of information increasesfor multiple times. Only a vanishinglysmall amount of this information iscurrently known. Secondly, even thissmall amount is fragmented betweendatabases, publications, natural historycollections and other data carriers thatare unable to exchange informationwith one another. As a consequence, nogeneral infrastructure is currently availableor researchers, environmentalists,politicians, teachers and others could toask both general and specific questionsabout the state of ecosystems.EXISTINGINFRASTRUCTUREThe largest natural history collectionsin Estonia are located at the Universityof Tartu, the Estonian University of LifeSciences, Tallinn University of Technologyand the Estonian Museum of NaturalHistory. Conditions in the storagefacilities of these collections are verydifferent across institutions and fields,and fail to guarantee the long-termpreservation of all collections of highscientific value. Various databases havebeen developed to reflect the collections.Currently there is no functioningsystem of a common basis and capableof managing all available information inEstonia and moreover, the proportionof digitaized data is relatively small asa whole.NEW INFRASTRUCTUREA central infrastructure for naturalhistory archives will be created, consistingof storage facilities conforming tointernational standards, and necessaryequipment required for the storage,research and recording of the collectionsin a database. One of the purposesof the present project is to create apublic information system that couldutilize, most of the existing Estonianbiodiversity information for conductinganalyses. Among other things, itis indispensable for resolving issues innature protection, for nature monitoring,discovering changes in ecosystemscaused by climate change, and so on. Inaddition to a digital information system,it is also important to regularly preservecomplete organisms or their DNA in thecollections. They can be used for analysingtemporal changes in ecosystemsbased on taxa, genes and chemicalcompounds.PARTNERSHIPSPartners of the NatArc are the Universityof Tartu, the Estonian Universityof Life Sciences, Tallinn University ofTechnology, the Environmental Boardand the Estonian Museum of NaturalHistory. This project is linked to otherinternational projects and infrastructures(e.g. CETAF, GBIF).http://natarc.ut.ee