LOTRED-SA contribute data
The LOTRED-SA metadatabase gives an overview of the proxy-network in southern South America with focus on the last 1000 years. It provides meta-information of proxy sites of different natural and human archives that might be suitable for climate reconstructions of high temporal resolution.
Three good reasons to contribute your data set
1. It is increasingly within the policy (or even a pre-condition) of funding agencies that supported projects make their results and data sets available. You benefit from co-authorship of important contributions, your work is cited, and your data is used. For example "The IGBP places high priority on establishment, maintenance, validation, description, accessibility, and distribution of high-quality, long-term global data sets, including the synthesis or generation of new global data sets," and "Full and open sharing of the full suite of global data sets, and other data sets needed for global change studies, is the primary objective of the IGBP-DIS" (IGBP Report No. 12).
2. The coordinators of LOTRED-SA and IGBP-PAGES officials may write letters of support for proposals, or even endorse projects for those who contribute.
3. The results of LOTRED are expected to reach a wide recognition, and it may be helpful for you and your research group if your data sets are included. Funding agencies might be interested in evaluating who contributed and which type of archives serves best for climate reconstructions.
An example: Pauling et al. 2003 (GRL) concluded that lake sediments are not among the useful proxies to reconstruct climate in Europe. The reason is simple: only one time series was made available for the reconstruction.
Data security
We are aware that contributing with sets of raw and original data to a data base may be problematic in some cases, particularly if the data set is not yet fully and extensively published. This sensitive issue will be handled with utmost care. The data will be physically stored with the coordinators Ricardo Villalba and Martin Grosjean. They guarantee that no dataset will leave unless explicitly authorized by the provider. Publication of work that arises from the data base will ONLY include metadata, where the individual data set and the original data are not visible.
During the course of the initiative, a plan for research and investigation, and related publications will be established. Important publications will feature the lead author (who performed the analysis and produced the metadata) and the collective of contributors to LOTRED-SA.
You will have the option to protect your data or to make it accessible preferably on the NOAA's World Data Center for Paleoclimatology website.
PAGES' Rules and Regulations for Privacy apply (more details).
What kind of proxy data are welcome?
All types of documentary data, early instrumental records and well dated, annual or decadal-resolution natural proxies such as tree rings, corals, lake sediments, ice cores and glaciers etc that are related to (or thought to be related to) any climate parameter or weather phenomena are welcome.
Data quality requirements
- The proxy data series should have a minimum length of 100 to 150 years
- Updated data series are ideal
- Long continuous series are most valuable. However, also records over a few years or discrete observations are highly valuable (mostly for verification purposes)
- Series with many data points (high resolution: annual, decadal) are most valuable
- Please provide RAW DATA (not filtered, not smoothed, not treated)
- Time series should have NO missing values within the 20th century (calibration period)
- Proxies which do not have data in the 20th century calibration period: Are there any possibilities to infer the climatic signal based on historical instrumental time series or other proxies?
- Even though the focus is on southern South America, data series from entire South America and surrounding areas are welcome.
Contact
For questions regarding the data or how to contribute new data, contact Raphael Neukom.