An all-taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, is an attempt to document and identify all biological species living in some defined area, usually a park, reserve, or research area.

The first use of the term appears to have been in 1993, in connection with an effort initiated by ecologist Daniel Janzen

Daniel Janzen

Daniel Hunt Janzen is an evolutionary ecologist, naturalist, and conservationist and the son of a previous Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service...

 to document the diversity of the Guanacaste National Park

Guanacaste National Park (Costa Rica)

Guanacaste National Park, in Spanish , is part of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste World Heritage Site, is a National Park in the northern part of Costa Rica, from the slopes of the Orosí and Cacao volcanoes west to the Interamerican Highway where it is adjacent to the Santa Rosa National Park....

 in Costa Rica. An ATBI focusing on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a United States National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The border between Tennessee and North...

of the southeastern United States is one of the most active and may be one of the most thorough to date.

A number of other, similar, efforts have been initiated for a variety of parks and research field stations.

All ATBIs are inherently incomplete since, a) the biota of even well-studied areas includes many undescribed and often difficult-to-study species, and b) new species are regularly established through immigration and introduction.

External links

• The All Taxa Biodiversity Alliance coordinates ATBIs for a number of public parks in the United States
• A working ATBI for the Huron Mountains of northern Michigan