Arid Lands Newsletter--link to home pageNo. 38, Fall/Winter 1995
The Whole Wired World

USA: Announcement of a new web site devoted to a semiarid environment

For example. . .

[picture of computer]

The creators of a new World Wide Web resource used the communication channel offered by another Internet protocol (the e-mail list BIODICEN-L) to get the word out to the international community of wildlife ecologists. The text of the U.S. National Biological Service's digital "press release" to the subscribers of BIODICEN-L follows.

Press Release (September 8, 1995)

The Northern Prairie Science Center today announced a World Wide Web home page that offers a variety of information on the biotic resources of the Great Plains. Currently 25 information resources can easily be browsed, ranging from the distribution of breeding birds in North Dakota, to the predators of the Prairie Pothole Region, to a glossary of terms used in ornithology. The effort is intended to make information that has already been gathered more widely accessible to resource managers, scientists, educators, and the public.

By connecting to http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/, one can examine distributional maps of butterflies, view photographs of reptiles and amphibians, find out which birds live in North Dakota (USA), survey literature on grassland birds, learn about prairie wildflowers, obtain a waterfowl population model, and much more. Visitors to the home page can view, and print if desired, more than 4,000 maps showing distribution patterns of animals.

The home page was developed in cooperation with the University of North Dakota, North Dakota State University, Minot State University, North Dakota Natural Heritage Program, Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board, North Dakota Game and Fish Department, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, North Dakota Herpetological Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Biological Service, and other contributors. The initial emphasis of the home page is on North Dakota, but information from elsewhere in the Great Plains is included, with more being added regularly.

For more information, contact the Center by email at npscinfo@usgs.gov; by phone at: (701)-253-5500 ; or by fax at: (701)-253-5553.

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