LTER Data via ORNL Mercury

The ORNL DAAC announces that data from the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network can be queried from the DAAC's Search System (http://mercury.ornl.gov/ornldaac/), which is based on Mercury. LTER is a National Science Foundation sponsored network of 26 ecological research sites in North America and Antarctica. Over 3,300 LTER data products can be queried from the ORNL DAAC's search system.

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.