Dear Colleagues:
We are pleased to announce a major round of improvements to the Neotoma
Paleoecology Database (www.neotomadb.org <http://www.neotomadb.org/>),
an international collaborative multiproxy database for the Quaternary
and Pliocene. Currently, Neotoma contains data from the Global Pollen
Database and Faunmap, a database of Quaternary mammals. Data from other
collaborative databases are coming soon. Improvements to the initial
database design and web interface were prioritized in a workshop in
September, 2010. Further improvements are underway and coming soon.
Major improvements include:
* Website relaunch. The Neotoma webpage has been completely
redesigned and relaunched, and includes introductory pages for the
scientific working groups that are collaborating with Neotoma
(e.g. pollen, diatoms, ostracodes, insects, peatlands, plant
macrofossils, middens, geochemistry...) and a News column with
recent development highlights
* Stratigraphic Diagrams! Neotoma Explorer now features interactive
stratigraphic diagramming, allowing e.g. pollen diagrams to be
quickly generated. When viewing a paleoecological dataset, select
the "Diagram" tab to try out the new tool. Users may customize the
y-axis, taxa grouping, and 5x exaggeration options. Also, mousing
over the plot lines will display the underlying abundance data
values.
* Mapped clusters. To handle the display of large datasets on the
Neotoma Explorer map interface, areas with dense site networks are
now mapped as clusters. These clusters will resolve into
individual sites as the viewer zooms in to a particular region.
Coming soon:
* A 'holding tank' that can be a temporary and publicly accessible
web page for datasets that are being processed for incorporation
into the relational database. The larger goal is to minimize the
time lag between when data is submitted to Neotoma and when it
becomes publicly available.
* Enhanced search tools for Neotoma Explorer.
* Additional datasets from the ostracode, diatom, pollen, plant
macrofossil and midden communities.
* Creating a citation database for papers that cite Neotoma and its
constituent datasets
Neotoma Phase II development is funded by a 5-year grant from the
Geoinformatics Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation, with
additional funding from the World Universities Network. We thank these
supporters and all who are contributing to Neotoma Phase II.
Sincerely,
Allan C. Ashworth, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Jessica L. Blois, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Robert K. Booth, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Donald F. Charles. [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Russell W. Graham, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Eric C. Grimm, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Stephen T. Jackson, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Alison J. Smith, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Jack W. Williams, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
