PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #30: Long-Term Ecological Research.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001. Presentation from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM. Exhibition Hall

Data management software and standards to facilitate ecological research.

Jones, Matthew¹, Berkley, Chad¹, Bojilova, Jivka¹, Higgins, Daniel¹, Jones, Christopher¹, Nottrott, Rudolf¹, Schildhauer, Mark¹, ¹

ABSTRACT- The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (http://knb.ecoinformatics.org) is a national network of research stations, laboratories, and investigators that supports synthesis of long-term, large-scale ecological information. As a part of this network, we have developed and formalized the Ecological Metadata Language, a metadata content profile that standardizes metadata and makes it available to ecologists for data interpretation and to computing systems for automated data processing. In this poster we describe this metadata profile as well as Morpho, a cross platform data management software application. Morpho provides an intuitive and easy to use data management environment for ecological scientists. Using this software, scientists can locate data found on the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity, and can make their own data accessible in a well-documented format for collaboration with other intended users or with the research community at large. We hope that these advances in ecological data management infrastructure will promote cross-site research and enable new collaborations and syntheses in ecology.

KEY WORDS: metadata, data management, Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity