Grants from two different foundations will help to continue funding for an online biodiversity encyclopedia.
In all, the Encyclopedia of Life received $12.5 million from both the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Both foundations were founding donors for the 10-year encyclopedia project, which is celebrating its second anniversary.
The MacArthur Foundation donated $10 million to the project, which matches its original contribution that helped found the Encyclopedia of Life. The Sloan Foundation donated $2.5 million in order to help build the reference sites.
The encyclopedia represents a partnership between both scientists and lay people in an attempt to build the online reference site, which will eventually have a web page for every species on the planet. Currently, there are 115,000 expert-appraised pages as the encyclopedia project heads toward its goal of 1.8 million pages.
"Creating a single portal to access a web page for each of the 1.8 million known species will provide a powerful tool to assist researchers and policymakers in better understanding biodiversity and discerning patterns of plant and animal behavior," Arthur Sussman, MacArthur vice president, said.
Thus far, over 30,000 images and videos have been uploaded to the encyclopedia, as well as the changing biodiversity of local areas. Additions made by the public are highlighted in yellow until professional scientists can verify them.
Students from four universities are also taking part in the project by creating species pages under the observation of their professors. Partner universities include: Harvard; Oregon State, the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.
Regionalized pages are also being constructed, which will feature local species pages in the area’s native languages. Accounts on the encyclopedia’s website, www.eol.org, are free and allow the public to add comments and observations.
