Regional tools

• Black sea phytoplankton check-list. The Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas (IBSS) designed a wiki-based tool during the Black Sea Scientific Network Project in FP6 for the creation of marine checklists. This special dedicated user-friendly software (first version) which creates and manages species checklists enables computers to parse the checklists and thus to provide developers with a means by which to aggregate and make use of the content. Automated checklist parsing and aggregation greatly increase the efficiency of checklist management and compilation of lists, in addition other types of information can be easily placed on species pages. Simple online viewing of any related unstructured information - text, maps, pictures, tables, etc. is also possible. The checklists software was created on the basis of a wiki engine. In order to store key species information in a structured form, suitable for parsing and use in other data management systems, dynamic templates were developed. Templates are standard wiki pages whose content is designed to be transcluded (embedded) inside other pages. Using templates forces the checklist editors to fill in the key species information in an online form with several parameters – value pairs. Various templates can be easily added by checklist administrator (10-20 minutes) if there is a demand for other structured information. The use of templates also makes the procedure of filling species information rather easy for species checklist editors. When a new species is being added to the checklist the system includes mandatory templates by default. For example, for the Black Sea phytoplankton checklist the following templates were developed: taxonomy, appearance in checklists, cell volume, formula, etc. The suggested wiki-based software tool doesn't set limitations on the type and amount of information that can be used to describe species in the species checklist. Information on ecology, morphology, bio-geographically distribution, etc. can be and should be attached to each species. Concurrently the key information which is stored in the form of templates represents the backbone of the checklist and can be easily extracted from the pages.
• Coastal expeditions reports (Currently available only in Russian). Last years IBSS NASU has been performing a large number of the coastal expeditions within the Sevastopol bay and other regions of the Crimean coastal zone. Total number of expeditions per year reached about 100 and number of stations about 500. To make the work with data and metadata collected during these expeditions more effective and fast, information on plans of expeditions and obtained results was structured and loaded to database. Based on a report of the head of the expedition the following information is being loaded to database: vessel name; participating IBSS department(s); start date, end date; members of expedition; method of stations coordinates determination; list of the stations done (number/name, starting time, end time, coordinates, remarks); the measurements performed (type of sample / measurements, number of measurements, instruments and methodology used, name of the person responsible for this measurements, remarks).