Diatoms of North AmericaDear colleagues,
I would like to share a call for participation in a recently funded networking project from the ISDR. See below the text and please share it among your contacts to help spread the word. Many thanks in advance!
DiatomS mEEt Databases: resources and practices to enable large-scale ecological research (SEED)
What: The SEED project (2 years) is structured in three phases. In Establish
we will generate protocols for integrating the Iberoamerican diatom
database. We will first develop a data sharing and collaboration
guidelines document, with special emphasis on data archiving through
generation of DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for unpublished datasets,
co-authorship guidelines of any related output that utilizes the
database or part of it, and citation and acknowledgement procedures. In Unify,
we will focus on assembling the different diatom datasets and
environmental variables. We will generate a generic and reproducible
curation procedure to ensure consistency in 1) diatom taxonomy, 2)
environmental variables (e.g., water chemistry, climate) and 3) metadata
(e.g., region, analyst, collection, geographical location,
identification resources). In Share,
we will transfer the results of the project which will be accessible
through an online database, and one hybrid workshop dedicated to data
steward and database training capacity using Neotoma as an open-access research infrastructure.
The database is envisioned to be dynamic and evolve according to the participant’s contributions and needs. For the first phase of the project, there will be four eligibility criteria:
Diatoms: species matrix (e.g., counts, relative abundance, presence/absence) including the most recent taxonomic name, and authority. We welcome contemporary and paleolimnological datasets from any Iberoamerican region.
Sites: sampling point information. This should include site name, country, year of sampling, habitat type, substrate, and geographical coordinates.
Environment: a matrix of environmental variables, including any type of abiotic characteristics relevant to diatom communities/assemblages and/or proxy in the case of diatom paleolimnological observations. Priority is given to water physical-chemistry variables.
Metadata: a table summarizing sources and descriptions of environmental variables and any type of information relevant to the dataset.
How: Data can be shared in any type of format (e.g., Excel, csv, R file). In this link
there is an example of a diatom database from South America, also
hosted in GitHub and Zenodo. SEED will use similar repositories and will
be set private so that the project participants can upload their
contributions and interact with the different phases of the project
before generating the final results. You can also share the files by
email.
Who: Early-career
researchers (MSc and PhD students and junior postdocs) are particularly
encouraged to participate, and the call is open to diatomists at any
career stage. If you are interested in participating in SEED, kindly fill out this form.
We will contact you for the first meeting in which the geographic focus
and data collection criteria according to participants’s data and
interests will be defined.
SEED receives funding from the International Society for Diatom Research, within its networking grant program
CONTACT US:
M. Lujan Garcia
Sabrina Bustos
Sandra Garcés-Pastor
Xavier Benito
