Highlights for February 18, 2000
USGS Center for Biological Informatics

I. Key Department News:

• DOI-NASA Hyperspectral Pilot Yields Promising Results. On February 23, the USGS will present an update on the status of a pilot program demonstrating the application of hyperspectral imaging technology to specific land management problems within Department of the Interior (DOI) bureaus. Findings will be presented at the NASA- sponsored Ninth Annual AVIRIS Earth Science and Applications Workshop being held at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The DOI-NASA Hyperspectral Imaging Technical Transfer Project coordinates an effort to demonstrate the application of AVIRIS data and analysis to critical DOI environmental issues on four study sites throughout the United States. This work is being accomplished by four DOI study teams with support from the NASA Office of Earth Science. The four study sites were selected through a DOI competitive proposal process and include mercury contamination at the Owyhee Reservoir, OR; invasive species (leafy spurge) detection, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND; National Vegetation Classification System delineation to the alliance level, Congaree Swamp, SC; and estimating the effect of invasive woody species on grasslands in the Great Plains Basin region. Preliminary data analysis for the leafy spurge detection study will be presented by the project team, represented by Michael O'Neill of the Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing at the University of California- Davis. These preliminary findings demonstrate promising early results. (Ralph Root, Denver, 303-202- 4232)

II. Agency Works on Presidential Initiatives:

• BioBot Prototype Debuts: First of Its Kind. The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Development Team has unveiled a new service - BioBot - the first intelligent biological search engine on the Internet. BioBot will greatly aid the biological community in the discovery, access, and delivery of information by providing a centralized location to search for much of the biological information currently found on the Internet. BioBot is made up of two components. The first, MyNBIIFilter, allows users to define specific biological topics of interest and to have information on these topics delivered to a personal Web page on a daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis. The user has total control and receives information only on the specified topics. Users can also exclude particular biological information sources, thus cutting down on "information overload" and allowing great flexibility in tailoring the service to their specific needs. The second major component of this powerful tool is BioBot Search. This feature not only accesses all the biological information being indexed by commercial vendors (such as Yahoo and Alta Vista), but also accesses the NBII-generated index of the Internet. Thus, users will have a single place to go for finding biological information - no more wading through seemingly endless files of non-related information! If you have any questions, comments, or feedback on BioBot, please send them to the NBII Development Team (nbii@nbii.gov). (Mike Frame, Denver, 303-202-4260)

• NBII State Page Updates. The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) provides users with access to biological information held by Federal, state, and local government agencies, tribal organizations, educational institutions, and non-government organizations. One way the NBII provides this information is through individual state Web pages. To date, this ongoing process to identify significant biological data and information Web sites and make them available to the public has resulted in the completion of 46 state pages. More information will soon be available for California, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. NBII state information can be found at http://www.nbii.gov/geographic/us/state.html. (Janice Little, Denver, 303-202-4225)

• Webtrends Serves NBII. Staff at the USGS Center for Biological Informatics (CBI) recently installed Webtrends - a state-of-the-art Web server statistics-gathering software package - on the National Biological Information Infrastructure server. Webtrends provides comprehensive analysis of Web server performance statistics, including broken internal and external links, types of browers accessing the site, where the clients are coming from, and the number of hits per page on the site. Use of this software will allow server operators to better manage their Web sites. Over the next few months, CBI plans to install Webtrends on all Web sites hosted by center servers. (John Clark, Denver, 303- 202-4244)

III. Notable Congressional Activity: No report.

IV. Press/Media Inquiries: No report.

V. FOIA Requests: No report.