This project will implement a scalable, World Wide Web- interfaced, data management system to support the mission of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and further the ecological community's efforts to integrate ecological data over increasingly broader ranges of space, time and discipline. The project will expand on the work that has been done for the San Diego Bay project at the San Diego Supercomputer Center by integrating systematics collection data from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, ecological survey data collections for selected California bioregions, and researcher- supplied data collections to be used at the ecology center. This range of data will provide pathfinders to develop standards and practices within the ecological community enabling it to anticipate and resolve known and yet-undiscovered problems to improve the predictive value of ecology, facilitate data sharing, and preserve valuable ecological data. The project will also address the issues of intellectual property rights in data, publication of data, and funding mechanisms for the long-term maintenance of ecological data in conjunction with the Ecological Society of America (ESA). These issues have been identified by the ESA as key to the utility of large and long-term data sets, and the sharing of those data by the ecological community. The ESA has established a special committee to initiate consistent practices and propose policies to facilitate data sharing and archiving by the ecological community. The ESA will utilize this project to participate and assist in the construction of a system that can satisfy its mandate to explore the structure, operation, and use of ecological data archives. The ESA is working to ensure the financial sustainability of an effective ecological data archive.
