2017 ESIP Summer Meeting

A new measurement ontology, the Ecosystem Ontology (ECSO), is now available, as is a system for annotating datasets in DataONE. Because ontologies include parent-child structure, synonyms and enable formal logic, the data discovery process can be streamlined when dataset metadata incorporates annotations from ontologies. The ECSO project currently focuses on measurements related to carbon cycling - such as fluxes (e.g., ecosystem exchange, NPP, respiration) and concentrations (of pigments, carbon compounds). Measurement descriptions include units, applicable observed entities (both terrestrial and aquatic), and methods, and are based on a broad corpus of datasets found in DataONE. Additions are planned to add other classes of measurements to ECSO. During this workshop, we will explore the ECSO ontology and demonstrate the annotation system. Participants are invinted to bring their own EML-described datasets for advice on annotating them with the ECSO ontology.