About SEEK

The Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge (SEEK) is a system designed to facilitate not only data acquisition and archiving, but integrating, transforming, analyzing, and synthesizing ecological and biodiversity data that was previously intractable.

The goals of SEEK are to build cyberinfrastructure which creates fundamental improvements in how researchers can:

• gain global access to ecological data and information,
• locate and utilize distributed computational services, and
• exercise powerful new methods for capturing, reproducing, and analyzing data by extending ecological and biodiversity analysis and research capabilities.

The SEEK cyberinfrastructure encompasses three integrated systems:

• EcoGrid-- a next generation internet architecture for data storage, sharing, access and analysis;
• Semantic Mediation System -- an advanced reasoning system that can determine whether relevant data and analytical components may be automatically transformed for use with a selected workflow; and
• Analysis and Modeling System -- a visual, automated environment where ecologists can design, modify and incorporate analyses to compose new workflows and models.

This SEEK cyberinfrastructure is being developed to address the many challenges associated with data accessibility and integration of large-scale biocomplexity data in the ecological sciences. SEEK will enable ecologists to efficiently capture, organize and search for data and analytical processes from their desk-top in a user friendly interface -- ultimately providing resources typically out of reach for many ecologists.

More About SEEK

• SEEK Components
• SEEK Contributors
• SEEK Teams and Working Groups
• SEEK Project Proposal
• SEEK overview slides from January 2005