Research on biological diversity is a global and cyberinfrastructure-enabled science.  The evolutionary origin of biological diversity and ecological processes that maintain it are active areas of research involving thousands of scientists worldwide. The outputs of those systematics and ecological investigations inform conservation management, government policy and civil society on the most important environmental phenomena in the history of mankind—the impacts resulting from the transformation of speciose natural systems into species-poor, managed ones.  

While profound changes are affecting earth’s biosphere and climate, networked cyberinfrastructure is changing the pace and methods of biodiversity research. Global- and continental-scale environmental issues demand accelerated research strategies, and rapid progress requires timely, global- and continental-scale collaboration. International collaboration with biodiversity and ecological informatics will build the common network protocols for taking on 21st century environmental science challenges. Biodiversity informatics training will be critical to develop the proficiencies needed to build and sustain that shared cyberinfrastructure.

The PIs propose a Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute (PASI), to be held in early 2007 in Costa Rica, on the theme of: Cyberinfrastructure for International, Collaborative Biodiversity and Ecological Informatics. The PASI will emphasize the development and application of Internet-based cyberinfrastructure tools for environmental research collaboration.  The geographical focus area for the PASI is the U.S., Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica and the other countries of Central America.  The PASI is a follow-on activity to a successful international workshop the PIs organized on “Cyberinfrastructure for International Biodiversity Research Collaboration,” held in Panama City on January 10-13, 2006.

The PASI will be a two-week training workshop held at the University of Costa Rica. Twelve lecturers will develop a curriculum of classes comprising several dimensions of leading-edge cyberinfrastructure for biodiversity research. The course will expose 15 graduate-level students from the U.S. and 15 students from the other focus countries to state-of-the-art network and informatics technologies, and will provide hands-on lab exercises for training in the utilization of cyber tools for biodiversity research.
Intellectual Merit: The PASI will address biodiversity and ecological informatics, a research discipline that is building the cyberinfrastructure foundations for environmental research in the 21st century.  CI-based research collaboration will likely be a predominant mechanism for investigations in the environmental sciences in the future.

Broader Impacts: The PASI we propose is focused precisely on the broader impacts of engaging biodiversity informatics researchers in the U.S. and Central America to deliver an intensive training exercise in technologies related to research collaboration for Master and Ph.D. students, post docs and junior faculty. The PASI is seen as a next step in a set of international activities aimed at establishing new research and training collaborations among the participating nations.