Working Group Goals: Given that this is the first attempt to address the issue of network availability of vegetation data our goals are extremely fundamental but critical at this stage:
- Assess the willingness of sites to participate in a Veg-DB system. Given the complexity of these databases, participating in this system will require a significant contribution of science and information management staff. We hope to gain a better sense of whether sites perceive the benefits of such a system as outweighing these costs.
- Scope out the functionality of the system. This would determine lowest level of acceptable function and logical benchmarks for development of the system. We would determine the types of synthetic data that would be available. For example, structural data such as biomass is likely easier to develop than production and mortality data; but is there value in just providing structural information? Do both have to be approached simultaneously?
