The ORNL DAAC took advantage of work done by its partner, the ORNL's National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) clearinghouse, which is also based on Mercury. NBII and LTER worked to make LTER data records searchable by converting LTER metadata (in Ecological Metadata Language) into the FGDC metadata standard, used by both NBII and the ORNL DAAC.
In addition to LTER and ORNL DAAC data, a variety of data held by data centers and researchers around the world is also available through the ORNL DAAC's Mercury search interface, including data related to climate, hydrology, vegetation/land cover, land use, soil characteristics, and gas flux/emissions. Mercury also provides links to Web sites containing models for predicting biogeochemical processes. The system allows for free text, fielded attributes (such as site, investigator, parameter, and data set title), spatial, and temporal searching.
Please take a look at the ORNL DAAC's search system to see how quickly and easily you can find key biogeochemical data and information throughout the world.