19^th International CODATA Conference
Category: Poster, Interoperability

Study of Ecological Metadata Standard

Hu Lianglin (hll@sdb.cnic.cn), Hou Yanfei, Li Jianhui
Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

In recent years, China has accumulated a great amount of data in ecological research, but most of datasets are difficult to discover, access, integrate and share due to the fact that they are isolated and heterogeneous. As we all know, metadata is a key issue for data discovery and integration. The Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN), which was established in 1988, is a functional network to meet the needs of both the national and international ecological research, and now CERN also has demands for a metadata specification to integrate and share its many ecological datasets.

After the comparative study of related metadata specifications, such as Ecological Metadata Language(EML), FGDC and its Biological Data Profile, ISO19115, and some others, we think that it is necessary to develop a metadata standard to meet requirements for ecological data integration and data sharing in China.
We developed a three-layer metadata model in ecological metadata specification, and the three layers are:

• The bottom layer is comprised with a set of fundamental metadata types and fields. They are the basic bricks for the other two layers.
• The middle layer includes a series of ecological branch specific or resource type specific metadata standards.
• The top layer is a standard containing a set of metadata modules which are common for describing all types of ecological data.

We are establishing the detailed content of the three layers and the metadata element encoding schemes by stages. And the UML models and XML schemas of every part in the top layer and the middle layer will be established after the corresponding work is accomplished.