The DendroEcological Network Version 1.0 - Technical Report

The DendroEcological Network (DEN; https://www.uvm.edu/femc/dendro) is an open-source repository of high quality dendrochronological and associated ecological data. The DEN was launched in 2018 with the goal of providing a database and online infrastructure to archive these data, and make those data easy to find, explore, and aggregate across disparate research projects. The DEN provides a mechanism to gather together a range of studies conducted across space and time into a larger data network. This network has the potential to expand the scale of inquiry through synthesis and aggregate investigations to address pressing ecological questions that no single study can answer alone. The DEN is the outcome of several years of work with collaborators from the Geography Department at the University of Vermont, the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative, and the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station along with a number of partners in the dendroecological community. The DEN is hosted and maintained by the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative. More details on the history of the DEN and why this is a needed advance in the field can be found in Rayback et al. (in prep.). The report that follows serves as technical documentation on the infrastructure underlying the DEN for reference by those interested in its construction and capabilities. This report describes the data model used to develop the DEN, including the implementation of the Ecological Metadata Language standard and the Tree Ring Data Standard, outlines the technical details of implementing that model, and identifies potential next steps in the development of the resource.