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    Breakout Sessions

Eco-Informatics & Decision Making - BDEI3
December 13-15, 2004
Breakout Session I - DRAFT Focus Statements

Policy - Areas for discussion include (but are not limited to) the policies organizations (across all sectors, public, private and nonprofit) place on: (1) the provision and production of eco-informatics tools; (2) the use (and possible abuse) of eco-informatics tools or information and their effectiveness; (3) the cross-organizational sharing of eco-informatics tools or information; and (4) the communication (or lack thereof) of public policy decisions grounded upon eco-informatics-based analysis.

Tools - Areas for discussion include (but are not limited to) an examination of: (1) problems facing decision makers using existing ecoinformatic tools as criteria for in developing and/or carrying out environmental policy; (2) problems using ecoinformatic research tools in support of decision making; and (3) future needs for strengthening ecoinformatics as effective support tools for decision makers.

Indicators - Indicators help communicate actionable information, drawn from often-complex data sources, to decision-makers. Biodiversity and ecosystem indicators should function to help decision-makers understand the status of and trends in ecological condition in a place and time frame of interest, and give those decision-makers a better basis for evaluating threats, possible management responses, and effectiveness of management actions taken. Areas for discussion in this session include (but aren't limited to) challenges, opportunities, and techniques for developing useful ecological indicators and putting them to use in ecosystem management. It might be very useful to discuss specific indicators that have proven useful in practice for addressing major issues such as loss of biodiversity, invasive exotic species, emerging diseases, and measuring outcomes of management programs.

Data Gaps - Areas for discussion include (but are not limited to) the problems stemming from geographic data gaps between biodiversity-rich land areas and conservation-managed land areas and the potential impact of these data gaps on decision making which may rely on ecological and environmental information.

Data Presentation - Areas for discussion include (but are not limited to): (1) the user population; (2) issues with the current software and user information products; and (3) things to remember about future software information products.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, U.S Geological Survey National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) and NASA.

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