Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference

The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) have developed a flexible intermediate data design pattern for ecological community data called “ecocomDP”. Implementation of this data model is intended to enhance the discoverability of and access to biodiversity data from NEON and EDI data holdings, including data from the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. The data model is applied in the ecocomDP R package, which provides tools for independent researchers to format their data following the ecocomDP standard, as well as tools to search and visualize data from NEON and EDI data holdings. The flexibility of the ecocomDP data model allows for ancillary data associated with observations to be preserved. Here we provide an overview of the tools available to data users. We also describe a modular workflow that is under development to map ecocomDP to the Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) format and expose ecocomDP data packages in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) data portal, and how this workflow can facilitate the discovery of NEON biodiversity data through GBIF. These tools are intended to lower the barriers for researchers in ecology and the environmental sciences to access and work with long-term biodiversity data.