In 1997, our lab embarked on a new program area, now referred to as bioinformatics. The main components of this program have been the ONRC Clearinghouse for the Olympic Peninsula, several metadata projects for the National Park Service, and the development of the Pacific Northwest Information Node of the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). The Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab has been very competitive in this area and has received eleven grants or contracts from six different funding sources for this program, ranging from $4,500 to $200,000. The FME Lab supplies metadata to four different nodes of the NBII and National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Clearinghouse. The following is a list of our clearinghouse and metadata projects to date.

• Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) Clearinghouse
  From 1997 to 2001, the Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab created the ONRC Clearinghouse, a comprehensive Clearinghouse for geospatial and biological metadata and data, for the Olympic Peninsula and Willapa Bay regions of Washington state. We developed over 650 metadata records for the project, representing data from federal, state, county and tribal agencies, University researchers, and non-profit agencies. Funded by the Olympic Natural Resources Center, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), and FGDC Cooperative Agreements Program, the ONRC records are also available through the Washington State Geospatial Clearinghouse.


• North Cascades National Park
  FAME Lab technicians developed metadata for 49 legacy geospatial and biological datasets for the North Cascades National Park Complex. A local index of these metadata is available These metatdata are indexed locally, and are searchable through the FARWest, Washington state and National Park Service Clearinghouse Nodes. This project was funded by the National Park Service and FGDC Cooperative Agreements Program.


• National Park Service Pacific West Region
  The FAME Lab developed geospatial metadata for a number of park units in the NPS's Pacific West Region, including Cabrillo National Monument, Crater Lake National Park, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, Fort Clatsop National Memorial, Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, Lava Beds National Monument, Mojave National Preserve, Nez Perce National Historic Park, Oregon Caves National Monument, Point Reyes National Seashore, San Juan Island National Historic Park, Whitman Mission National Historic Site, and Yosemite National Park. In most cases, 'base' geospatial data layers such as park boundaries, roads, trails, and hydrographic features were developed to give each of these parks a basic representation. These data are indexed on the NPS GIS site, and are available on the FARWest, Washington state and National Park Service FGDC Clearinghouse Nodes. This project was funded by a grant from the FGDC Cooperative Agreements Program to the NPS.


• Cabrillo National Monument
  The NPS Pacific West Region also asked the Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab to develop metadata for geospatial and biological data layers for Cabrillo National Monument and the surrounding Point Loma Ecological Reserve, which is jointly managed by the NPS, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other Federal agencies. This reserve contains a remnant of California's coastal sage scrub habitat, now largely lost to development. We developed metadata for the many data layers used as inputs for the model used to design the reserve. Metadata developed under this project are indexed on the NPS GIS site, and are hosted on and searchable through the FARWest, Washington state, and National Park Service FGDC Clearinghouse Nodes. This project was funded by the National Park Service.


• Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab Metadata
  Our metadata technicians have developed metadata for most of the Lab's research and technical assistance projects and graduate student research. Indexed locally, these records are also hosted on and searchable through the FARWest NBII node and Washington state node. Many records for our research on the Olympic Peninsula are also on the ONRC node.


• Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team
  Our metadata technicians are also developing metadata for several projects at the USDA Forest Service Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab, including the Northwest Fire Research Clearinghouse (FIREHouse), which is supported by the Joint Fire Science Program and the NBII.


• NBII Pacific Northwest Information Node (PNWIN)
  In 2000, Congress appropriated four million dollars to the NBII program to develop the beginnings of the Next-Generation NBII. One component of this "NBII-2", as envisioned in Teaming with Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America's Living Capital (President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, June 1998) is a series of regional information nodes. Because of our reputation in NBII clearinghouse and metadata work, the Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab was asked to develop the NBII's Pacific Northwest Information Node.