One of the important components of the Caspian Environment Programme is the assessment of Transboundary Biodiversity Priorities and one of the goals of this activity is to establish a joint regional database (DB), as the repository for biodiversity information. The second CEP Biodiversity meeting (Almaty, August 2000) decided to start development of the Caspian Sea Biodiversity Database.
Possible approaches and draft structure of this database were discussed at the second CEP Data and Information Management meeting (Baku, December 2000). They were finished for the Marine module of the DB at the special workshop hold in Astrakhan, Russia, in January 2001. A document with the Species Description Pattern and a list of main species for the Demonstration version of the Marine module of the Biodiversity DB were compiled jointly by scientists of Caspian Fisheries Research Institute (KaspNIRKH, Astrakhan, Russia) and Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences (ZIN, Saint Petersburg, Russia).
As a result, this Demonstration version of the Biodiversity DB was prepared. It includes information on the most interesting 36 species. Dr V.N. Belyaeva (KaspNIRKH) served as a project leader and the scientific editor of the species descriptions prepared by the regional scientists. It is planned that the database will be updated during the second stage of CEP.
Any usage of text, data and maps from this web site in publications must be acknowledged as follows: Biodiversity Database prepared in the framework of the Caspian Environment Programme (http://www.caspianenvironment.org/biodb/) and names of the author(s) of the correspondent description.
Please take into account that this web page is still under development and editing.