About the Biocomplexity Thesaurus Project

Development of the Biocomplexity Thesaurus began in 2002-2003 through a partnership between the former USGS NBII Program and ProQuest (formerly CSA), a worldwide information company with more than 30 years experience as a leading bibliographic database provider. The original Biocomplexity Thesaurus, first made available online in 2003, was a merger of five individual thesauri:

• the CSA Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Thesaurus
• the CSA Life Sciences Thesaurus
• the CSA Pollution Thesaurus
• the CSA Sociological Thesaurus
• the CERES/NBII Thesaurus

In 2004, the CSA Ecotourism Thesaurus was also merged into the Biocomplexity Thesaurus.

Merging and reconciliation of the terms in these thesauri was performed by Jessica Milstead, a leading expert in the development of scientific thesauri.

In 2007, USGS assumed management of the Biocomplexity Thesaurus and, in 2008, significantly expanded it to include more than 2,000 additional concepts relevant to the fire ecology and management communities. This expansion was made possible by the very generous contributions of the following terminologies by their managing organizations:

• E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Thesaurus, Tall Timbers Research Station
• Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) Glossary
• Northwest and Alaska Fire Effects Clearinghouse Glossary
• National Wildfire Coordinating Group Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology
• Encyclopedia of Southern Fire Science
• Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center Topics

The USGS Science Analytics and Synthesis (SAS) Program is committed to maintaining and expanding the Biocomplexity Thesaurus to support science informatics initiatives within USGS, and externally.