Connecting biodiversity data during the IPY: the path towards e-polar science

The International Polar Year (IPY) was a unprecedented effort in polar research committing thousands of participants from many nations (Carlson 2010), with a common objective: to describe and understand complex systems using multiple approaches, in an integrated fashion. IPY scientists have collected enormous amounts of data in many formats, ranging from multimedia, hourly to millennial time series, isotope ratios and fractions, energy and material fluxes, species identification and distribution patterns, disease types and rates, genetic sequences, samples identifiers, singular events and gradual processes, to sociological studies (Carlson 2011).