Sites for Ecological Data

Sponsored by the Education Section of the Ecological Society of America

Below are listed numerous sites that contain (or at least potentially contain) ecological data amenable for use in a classroom setting. This list will frequently evolve, and will become annotated and more user-friendly. Return often!

Your suggestions and contributions are welcome. Please e-mail all comments to the address given at the bottom of the page.

Link to Webpage for Workshop: Using the Web in Ecology Classes, held at the 1998 ESA Meeting in Baltimore.

Bright Ideas!!. This page contains ideas contributed by others describing how they use on-line ecological data in courses.

Sites classified by type of data available

Note: Most sites require that data users register prior to using data. Please refer to disclaimers for that particular site location.

• Aquatic data (phytoplankton, water chemistry, flow data)
• Terrestrial data (plants, animals, microbes, soil nutrients, productivity, biogeochemistry)
• Weather and climate data (temperature, precipitation)
• Geographical data (typically requires appropriate software like ARC-INFO)
• Cemetery data (a link to a page maintained by Ernest Williams contining links to cemetery data provided by others).
• More cemetery data (a link to data provided by Marianna Wood).

Sites classified by source

LTER sites - LTER homepage

LTER listing of datasets (discusses data availability by category)

Data Managers Site Resource List (reviews the general dataset capabilities of all the LTER sites)

• Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon
• Arctic Tundra LTER site, North Slope of Alaska UAF's Toolik Lake Field Station
• Baltimore Urban LTER site, Maryland
• Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest, Alaska
• Central Arizona - Phoenix, Arizona
• Cedar Creek LTER site, Minnesota
• Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory LTER site, North Carolina / University of Georgia
• Harvard Forest, Massachusetts
• Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire
• Jornada LTER site, New Mexico.
• Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan
• Konza Prairie Research Natural Area, Kansas
• Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico
• McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica.
• North Temperate Lakes, Wisconsin
• Niwot Ridge/Green Lakes Valley, Colorado
• Palmer Station, Antarctica
• Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico
• Shortgrass Steppe WWW Home Page, Colorado
• Virginia Coast Reserve LTER, Virginia

Sites with directly accessible data

These sites contain data, often in tabular format, that can be imported into a spreadsheet or statistics program for further analysis. These sites generally have "help" guides that explain the datasets, and provide definitions for the various columns and rows.

This list will grow as more links are evaluated.

• Long Term Field Studies for Undergraduate Education: A Snapshot in Time. A resource devoted to the establishment of a long term field experiment at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Contains a variety of physical and biological data from short-term and longer-term studies.
• Welcome to the IEP Home Page for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Estuary Interagency Estuary Program) Contains copious data concerning physical and biological parameters taken with the estuary. Note link to "Available data."
• NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) Contains access to oceanographic, hydrographic and time-series data taken in all oceans.
• National Plant Data Center Home Page Contains information concerning taxonomy, weed status, wetland indicator status, distributions, and other attributes of plant species throughout the US.
• NOAA salinity data.
• NOAA Paleoclimatology Program A central location for paleoclimate data, research, and education. NOAA Paleoclimatology helps the World share scientific data and information related to climate system variability and predictability.
• United States NWIS-W Data Retrieval. Stream and river flow data from throughout the US, posed by the USGS
• Wilkes-Barre Cemetery Data Contains birth and death dates for three historic cemeteries in the Wilkes-Barre (PA) area.

Other sites

These sites either have not been evaluated for relevant data, do not directly contain relevant data, or contain data that are only accessible by contacting a datakeeper.

• Environmental Data Sources around the World Contains a broad spectrum of environmentally-oriented sites from around the world. The "highest quality sites" are indicated by a star!
• California Department of Water Resources Division of Planning Contains data related to hydrodynamic modeling.
• Spatially Oriented Research in Ecology A source of information for those with interests and capabilities pertaining to GIS systems.
• NAIA Ecology Inference System
• Electronic Green Journal
• Great Lakes Information Network Web Server
• Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) Environmental Sciences Division (ESD)
• NOAA Environmental Information Services Gopher
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Analyzing Impacts of Floods and Droughts
• eNetDigest Environment Index
• Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding
• Plant Healthcare
• Smithsonian Institution/Man and the Biosphere Biological Diversity Program
• Southern Appalachian Man and Biosphere (SAMAB) homepage
• U Montana Riparian and Wetland Research Program
• USRA home page
• Microbial Ecology
• San Francisco Estuary Institute's Regional Monitoring Program Database
• San Diego Bay Project site
• University of Nevada Biological Resources Research Center site
• The Environmental Management Technical Center, (Onalaska, WI)
• University of Vermont Plant Ecology Datasets
• Long term succession from Southern Illinois University
• National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Um, I really do not see any data here.

Leads to Commercial Sources

• Digital Studios/CyberLearning Collection

Go to ESA Education Section homepage

Last update: 6 October 1997.