The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation’s Biodiversity Informatics Facility applies information technologies to collect, organize and analyze biological and environmental data from expeditions, remote sensing, natural history collections, modeling and databases. Biodiversity informatics is the application of information technologies to collect, organize and analyze biological and environmental data from natural history research collections, databases, fieldwork, remote sensing, and modeling. The field of biodiversity informatics has grown rapidly in recent years, largely due to the development of distributed databases of georeferenced collections, new GIS-based tools for analysis, and advances in remote sensing. The BIF aims to develop and apply biodiversity informatics methods and tools to provide new insights in conservation, ecology and evolution.

Through research that applies cutting-edge spatial analysis technologies, we aim to discover new insights and develop new methods in ecology, evolution and conservation biology. Through training initiatives and the development and distribution of software and scripts, we aim to strengthen the capacity of students, educators, researchers, conservation practitioners, and the broader public to study and better understand biodiversity.