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 The Field Museum’s Mission:
Plant and Animal Inventories
Many of The Field Museum’s collections come from scientists who go out into the field to document diversity at a given site or in a given region. This type of research is called an inventory. Social and biological inventories drive landscape protection efforts and provide the foundation for site-specific conservation strategies.
Social Asset Inventories identify cultural diversity as leading entry points for local capacity-building and program participation.
Biological Inventories identify regions and natural communities of urgent conservation importance based on biological richness and uniqueness.
The goal of an inventory is to provide the most detailed picture possible of the biodiversity at a site by answering the following questions:
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What plants, animals, and other organisms live there?
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Where they were found or seen?
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What they were doing?
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How many of each were observed?
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Biological inventories include:
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Comprehensive Biological Inventories
 In a Comprehensive Biological Inventory, teams of scientists spend months at a time conducting exhaustive studies of a particular place. These researchers typically return year after year to record rare and ephemeral species and to ensure that the data gathered is as accurate as possible.
The resulting specimens can be studied in perpetuity (meaning “forevermore”) when they become part of the Museum’s collections. There, they act as a record for comparison when later inventories seem to indicate that the species composition of a community is changing or that populations are declining at a given site.
Data gathered during comprehensive inventories are shared with scientists and policymakers around the globe for a variety of purposes. It helps scientists who study habitat condition, species viability, patterns of evolution, and much more.
Policymakers frequently rely on inventory data when attempting to define the boundaries for protected areas or when evaluating the viability of different conservation strategies.
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Rapid Biological Inventories
 A Rapid Biological Inventory takes place when policymakers cannot wait for the outcome of comprehensive inventories before allocating resources and taking conservation action. These inventories function as a powerful tool for placing critical biological data in the hands of the decision makers.
A Rapid Biological Inventory (RBI) usually takes a month to complete. During this time, teams of scientists focus on groups of organisms that indicate habitat type and condition. The scientists also look for organism that can be surveyed quickly and accurately.
Rather than producing an exhaustive list of species, Rapid Biological Inventories are used to identify important biological communities that are of an outstanding quality and significance in a regional or global context.
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Introduction | Investigate Biodiversity | YBC | Meet the Scientist | Explore Global Diversity | Events and Programs | Take Action! | Teaching Biodiversity | Biodiversity Exhibition | Credits
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The collections provide scientists the resources they need to continue searching for answers to the planet’s lingering mysteries and growing environmental problems.
—John W. McCarter, Jr.
President and CEO
The Field Museum
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