If They’re Alive, You’ll Read About Them Here

“Constantly reconfiguring, morphing, decaying, the natural world is at once confounding, sublime, brutal and unspeakably elegant.” These words welcome viewers to a new online “Encyclopedia of Life” that will list and describe all species of life – 1.8 million known and some of the millions more yet unknown. Museums, universities, philanthropists and researchers from around the world are teaming up on the massive project to document biodiversity, as proposed by biologist E.O. Wilson of Harvard University. The project, which will take 10 years and may cost up to $100 million, sounds costly, but software engineers are already devising numerous practical applications. For example, the site will offer custom maps showing selected species in minutes, a process that now takes months. Researchers will also rely on the site to predict the effects of climate change and identify areas where intervention can be most useful. – YaleGlobal