[seek-kr-sms] Re: Ontologies in Ecology

[Matt Jones]

Hi James,

Thanks for writing.  We share a strong interest in vocabularies for 
expressing ecological temrinology.  Unfortunately I don't have time to 
go into a lot of detail at the moment (I have a workshop all this week), 
but I thought I would bring up two points that might be of interest to 
you.

First, the SEEK Project (Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge; 
http://seek.ecoinformatics.org) has a Knowledge representation working 
group specifically targeted at developing ontologies for ecology that 
can be used in data and analytical systems.   As part of this work, 
we've developed some top-level ontologies that can be used to glue 
together observations from very different domains through a generic 
ontology of measurements.  We've extended this into some specific 
sub-areas of ecology that are relevant to our case studies, but would 
like to extend them into other ecological domains as well.  You can see 
our current DRAFT ontologies in OWL format here:
http://cvs.ecoinformatics.org/cvs/cvsweb.cgi/seek/projects/kr-sms/OWLOntologies/

Second, we're about to open a search for a postdoc to work on further 
development of these ontologies, so if you know anybody with the right 
background in ecology AND formal systems we'd please let me know -- 
we'll be sure to send along the job position description.

I'd like to hear more about your work, and there's a group of people who 
discuss both development of ecological vocabularies and application of 
those vocabularies for real-world uses -- feel free to join us at 
seek-kr-sms at ecoinformatics.org (subscribe at 
http://www.ecoinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/seek-kr-sms).

Cheers,

Matt

James Brooks - Thesaurus Manager wrote:
> Dear Dr Jones,
> 
> In the context of a very small funded project on vocabulary / terminology
> issues relating to 'invasions biology' (the results I hope to be made openly
> accessible), I've been thinking about core and/or upper-level ontologies for
> ecological science and environmental management.
> 
> I have quite a good knowledge of existing thesauri relevant to this domain,
> but wondered what else is 'out there' that might be a bit more robust,
> perhaps, in terms of clarity of semantics and specificity of relationships
> between concepts, but also of more generic utility. Are you aware of such?
> 
> What started as a seemingly straight-forward project has become more
> problematic as I've considered 'concept change' and theory development in
> ecology, the limitations of current knowledge representation tools and
> knowledge organization resources, etc.   
> 
> Anyway, I would be interested to know of others working in similar areas,
> perhaps with an aim to future collaboration. I'd better describe myself as a
> 'generalist', perhaps a 'subject specialist'; I'm an entomologist by
> training, an information scientist by profession.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> James 
> 
> 
> James Brooks
> Thesaurus Manager
> CAB International
> Wallingford
> Oxon, OX10 8DE, UK
> 
> Tel: +44 (0)1491 829448
> Fax: +44 (0)1491 833508
> Email: j.brooks at cabi.org <mailto:j.brooks at cabi.org> 
> 
> Visit us at www.cabi.org <http://www.cabi.org> 
> 	   www.cabi-bioscience.org <http://www.cabi-bioscience.org> 
>    www.cabi-publishing.org <http://www.cabi-publishing.org> 
> 
> www.cabthesaurus.info <http://www.cabthesaurus.info> 
> 
> 

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Jones                                     jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Fax: 425-920-2439    Ph: 907-789-0496
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------