BISC 307: Ecosystem Ecology

As we noted in class, the LTER Data Portal is simultaneously amazing and quite messy (like ecosystem ecology!).  There are a number of ways to search, but I recommend two:

• Browsing by various means

  • Note: one of the ways you can browse is by process.  

  • This might be a nice way to get at a particular ecosystem function you are interested in!  For example, you can look at nutrient (particularly nitrogen) cycling.  

  • Browse on!  

• Using the advanced search 

  • Try starting at the subject tab.  You may want to limit to particular sites on the LTER Sites tab as well.

  • Note:  I have emailed the information management team at LTER (!!) to ask what the difference is between subject searching & keyword searching.  If I hear back, I will update this guide!

    • UPDATE - paraphrased email from the LTER folks!:  

      The three metadata fields we specifically include in a subject-based search are: title, abstract, and keyword. By default, a subject-based search looks through all three of those fields.
      
      By selecting any of the "Title only", "Abstract only", or "Keywords only" radio buttons, the user can restrict the search to only that specific metadata field content.
       
    • TRANSLATION: Subject searches will search words listed in the title, abstract and 'keywords' sections of submitted dataset write-ups.  Keyword searches only search some provided list of keywords.
       
    • THEREFORE - I recommend SUBJECT searches (or if this is yielding too many results, try limiting to keyword OR abstract).  

Let me know if you have trouble identifying interesting or relevant data sets!