The Korean Bird Information System (KBIS) through open and public participation

BACKGROUND: The importance of biodiversity conservation has been increasing steadily due to its benefits to human beings. Recently, producing and managing biodiversity databases have become much easier because of the information technology (IT) advancement. This made the general public's participation in biodiversity conservation much more practical than ever. For example, an openfree web service can be devised for a wider spectrum of people to collaborate with each other for sharing biodiversity information. Bird migration is one such area of the collaboration. Korean migratory birds are usually traceable in the important routes of the East Asian-Australia Flyway (EAAF), and they play a key role as an environmental change indicator of the Earth. Therefore, the preservation of migratory birds requires an information system which involves a broader range of voluntary and interactive knowledge network to process bird information production, circulation, and dissemination. RESULTS: The Korean Bird Information System (KBIS) aims to construct a cooperative partnership domestically and internationally through the acquisition, management, and sharing of Korean bird information involving both expert and non-expert groups. KBIS has six goals: data standard, system linkage, data diversity, utilization, bird knowledge network, and statistics. The key features of KBIS are to provide a simple search, gallery (photographs), and community to lead the participation of numerous non-experts, especially amateur bird watchers. The function of real-time observation data submission through the internet has been accomplished. It also provides bird banding database, statistics, and taxon network for experts. Especially, the statistics part provides the user with easy understanding of ecological trends of species based on the time and region. CONCLUSION: KBIS is a tool for the conservation and management of bird diversity and ecosystem that encourages users to participate by providing the openfree data access and real-time data input web-interface. It will enhance bird knowledge networking activities locally, nationally, and internationally. In addition, it provides opportunities to enhance the public awareness for the preservation of bird diversity and species information in relevant localities through the database construction and networking activities. It can be found at http://korbird.naris.go.kr.