IAVS Working Groups - EcoInformation Working Group

EcoInformation Working Group

Contact person: Robert Peet, Chapel Hill, USA
E-mail: peet@unc.edu
Homepage: http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/vegdata/
E-mail mailing list: http://lists.unc.edu/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=veg

Working Group Report: 2008

Susan Wiser, Nick Spenser, and Bob Peet have organized on behalf of the IAVS Ecoinformatics Working Group an initiative to establish an international exchange standard for vegetation plot data. The initial meeting was held 24-27 April, 2007 at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC, USA. A broadly international team of approximately 14 persons was invited. The IAVS Working Group was represented by Robert Peet, Susan Wiser, Stephan Hennekens, Martin Kleikamp, and Miquel Cáceras. Details are available at http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/vegdata/nescent2007.htm After the meeting Martin Kleikamp and Miquel Cáceras developed draft XML schemas and these were shared with a core group that also included Jerry Cooper, Michael Lee, Matt Jones, Robert Peet, Nick Spenser, and Susan Wiser. A follow-up meeting to further develop the emerging consensus schema was held June 23-26 2008, again at NESCent with Martin, Miquel, Nick and Bob participating. Subsequently draft versions of the proposed schema have been circulated. Nick Spenser intends to present this project to TDWG (the Biodiversity Information Standards organization) at its meeting in Perth in October 2008. The intent will be to make this activity an official TDWG Interest Group, closely aligned with the Observations Group, so that the standards developed will have more broad-based, international acceptance and compatability. We hope the resultant exchange standard will be endorsed and adopted by both TDWG and IAVS, and will facilitate the rapid development of vegetation plot data sharing internationally.

North American plant ecology has been lagging significantly behind European plant ecology in the compilation of plant traits. Last year Robert Peet endorsed on behalf of the Ecoinformatics Working group a research coordination network proposal to the US NSF specifically to develop a trait database for North American plant taxa. The proposal has been funded and the first formal meeting was held at Columbia University in New York City in December 2007. IAVS members participating in TraitNet include Scott Collins, Sandra Diaz, Ingolf Kuehn, and Robert Peet.

A new working group has been established at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, CAalifornia to work on a project titled “Developing an integrated botanical information network to investigate the ecological impacts of global climate change on plant biodiversity. This group, led by Brain Enquist and codirected by Rich Condit, Robert Peet, and Brad Boyle seeks to build on the progress made in merging large plot databases and plant occurrence databases represented by projects like VegBank, Salvias, and the CTFS tropical plot network.

Working Group Report: 2007

The IAVS Ecoinformatics Working Group sponsored a symposium at the 2006 annual meeting held in Palmerston North in February 2007. This symposium was organized for the Working Group by Susan Wiser of LandCare.

Robert Peet represented IAVS at two NSF-sponsored workshops about data archives and data sharing held for representatives of professional societies and organized by the Ecological Society of America. The first was held in December 2006 at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara California, and the second was held in May 2007 at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham North Carolina. A resultant manuscript has been submitted to PLoS.

Susan Wiser, Nick Spenser, and Bob Peet organized a meeting held 24-27 April, 2007 at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC. The objective of the meeting was to initiate work toward drafting an international exchange standard for vegetation plot data. A broadly international team of approximately 14 persons was invited. The IAVS Working Group was represented by Robert Peet, Susan Wiser, Stephan Hennekens, and Martin Kleikamp. Jerry Cooper intends to present this project to TDWG (the Biodiversity Information Standards organization) at its meeting in Bratislava in September 2007. The intent will be to make this activity an official TDWG Interest Group so that the standards developed will have more broad-based international acceptance. More details on the workshop results and future plans will be distributed by Susan Wiser in the near future, and will be distributed to the Working Group membership for comment.

North American plant ecology has been lagging significantly behind European plant ecology in the compilation of plant traits. Last year Robert Peet endorsed on behalf of the Ecoinformatics Working group a research coordination network proposal to the US NSF specifically to develop a trait database for North American plant taxa. The proposal has been funded and the first formal meeting will be held at Columbia University in New York in December 2007. IAVS members participating in TraitNet include Scott Collins, Sandra Diaz, Ingolf Kuehn, and Robert Peet.

Working Group Report: 2006

The Eco-informatics Working Group will sponsor a symposium at the annual IAVS meeting to be held in New Zealand in February 2007. This symposium has been organized for the working group by Susan Wiser of LandCare. In December 2006, Robert Peet represented IAVS at a meeting about data archives and data sharing held for representatives of professional societies at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara California. Susan Wiser, Nick Spenser, and Bob Peet have organized a meeting to be held 24-27 April, 2007 at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC. The objective of the meeting will be to draft an international exchange standard for vegetation plot data. A broadly international team of approximately 12 persons has been invited. Costs are being covered by a grant obtained by Susan Wiser from the New Zealand government. North American ecology has been lagging significantly behind European ecology in the compilation of plant traits. This past year Robert Peet endorsed on behalf of the Eco-informatics Working Group a research coordination network proposal to the US NSF specifically to develop a trait database for North American taxa. We have recently learned that the proposal will be funded. The initial steering Committee is expected to consist of D. Bunker (Chair), S. Diaz, S. Naeem, M. Schildhauer, and R. Peet

The Working Group maintains a website as well as an E-mail mailing list to which you can subscribe:
http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/vegdata/
http://lists.unc.edu/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=vegdata%20

Working Group Report: 2005

Numerous research institutions and national agencies have established databanks for species composition data that serve a multitude of purposes ranging from purely scientific to applications in nature conservation and landscape planning. Simultaneously, massive amounts of spatially explicit data on site attributes (e.g. climate, soils, topography) have become available and comprehensive data on specific taxa (e.g. distribution, phylogeny, life-history traits, functional attributes) are becoming available. This emerging availability of large quantities of species co-occurrence, site attribute, and taxon attribute data is transforming the study of ecological communities. The IAVS Working Group for Eco-informatics was formed to facilitate access to, and analysis of, such data. In particular, we wish to (1) establish standards for data exchange to facilitate data sharing; (2) provide tools for data identification, access, integration, storage, and analysis; (3) facilitate communication among scientists studying community ecology through exploration of multiple large databases. We invite vegetation scientists from around the world to join us in this enterprise.

We currently are focused on development of an XML schema and data exchange standard for plot data. In March 2005 we held a short discussion at the European Eco-informatics meeting in Halle. At that meeting Bob Peet (representing the VegBank.org), Stephan Hennekens (representing TurboVeg), and Rudi May and Martin Kleinkamp (representing VegetWeb) agreed to collaborate toward this end. Bob is attempting to find funding for this effort through the US National Science Foundation, and Susan Wiser is looking for funding through the New Zealand government. We will let the Working Group members know when and if we have any progress to report.

Our Working Group plans to sponsor a session on a topic in eco-informatics at the February 2007 IAVS meeting in New Zealand. Please send your suggestions for content to Bob Peet or Susan Wiser (WiserS@landcareresearch.co.nz).