9809606 Charles This award supports the establishment of the Diatom Paleolimnology Data Cooperative (DPDC). Diatoms are used widely to infer climate characteristics from lake sediment cores. New methods for inferring past climatic conditions are developing rapidly, and many diatom-based studies are addressing key climate issues. The purpose of the DPDC is to both 1) provide the climate change community with improved and more accessible estimates of past temperature, precipitation, water chemistry, lake level and hydrologic characteristics, and 2) provide diatom paleolimnologists with data that will significantly improve their ability to produce such estimates. In addition to ecological data, the DPDC is designed to contain the climate related inferences from diatom paleolimnology studies of sediment cores. Long- and short-term values of inferred salinity, lake level, and other characteristics are very useful to paleoclimate researchers for understanding past climate systems and for developing and evaluating climate models. All data will be stored in a standard format. It will be freely available to the scientific community. ***
