Ecological Data (PDF)

Ecologists are increasingly tackling difficult issues like global
change, loss of biodiversity and sustainability of ecosystem
services. These and related topics are enormously challenging,
requiring unprecedented multidisciplinary collaboration and rapid
synthesis of large amounts of diverse data into information and
ultimately knowledge. New sensors, computers, data collection and
storage devices and analytical and statistical methods provide a
powerful tool kit to support analyses, graphics and visualizations
that were unthinkable even a few years ago. New and increased
emphasis on accessibility, management, processing and sharing of
high-quality, well-maintained and understandable data represents a
significant change in how scientists view and treat data. These
issues are complex and despite their importance, are typically not
addressed in database, ecological and statistical textbooks.

This book addresses these issues, providing a much needed
resource for those involved in designing and implementing
ecological research, as well as students who are entering the
environmental sciences. Chapters focus on the design of ecological
studies, data management principles, scientific databases, data
quality assurance, data documentation, archiving ecological data
and information and processing data into information and knowledge.
The book stops short of a detailed treatment of data analysis, but
does provide pointers to the relevant literature in graphics,
statistics and knowledge discovery. The central thesis of the book
is that high quality data management systems are critical for
addressing future environmental challenges. This requires a new
approach to how we conduct ecological research, that views data as
a resource and promotes stewardship, recycling and sharing of
data.

Ecological Data will be particularly useful to those
ecologists and information specialists that actively design, manage
and analyze environmental databases. However, it will also benefit
a wider audience of scientists and students in the ecological and
environmental sciences.