The SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal (biodiversity.aq) is an international effort that seeks to increase our knowledge and understanding of Antarctic and Southern Ocean biodiversity.
It is a community of researchers, data custodians and developers from around the world that supports the mobilisation publication, retrieval and analysis of Antarctic and Southern Ocean biodiversity data in a free and open manner in line with the Antarctic treaty and the FAIR data Principles (Finable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). We aim to create an information ecosystem of various data bases, data systems, web services tools etc that can be used by anyone with an interest in Antarctic and Southern Ocean biodiversity.
Biodiversity.aq is an international initiative of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). It finds it roots in the Census of Antarctic Marine Life and started in 2005. The central facilities are hosted by the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural sciences (RBINS, www.naturalsciences.be) and the Belgian Biodiversity Platform (BBPf, www.biodiversity.be).
The SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal is the regional thematic node of the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS, www.obis.org), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, www.gbif.org) and works closely together with the Southern Ocean Observation System (SOOS, www.soos.aq).