Numerous research institutions and national agencies have established databases of vegetation records that serve both basic and applied research purposes. Simultaneously, massive amounts of data on site attributes (e.g. climate, soils, topography, land-use) have been delivered at increasing spatiotemporal resolution and extent. In addition, 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 vegetation communities. In this context, the IAVS Ecoinformatics Working Group was established to facilitate the access to and analysis of these data. In particular, the group aims at:

• establishing standards for data exchange to facilitate data sharing;
• providing tools for data identification, access, integration, storage, and analysis;
• fostering communication among vegetation scientists studying community ecology through the exploration of multiple large databases. We invite vegetation scientists from around the world to join us in this enterprise.