EDI and NEON dataset descriptions and coverage to support the paper "ecocomDP: A flexible data design pattern for ecological community survey data"

This dataset contains an inventory for the paper entitled "ecocomDP: A flexible data design pattern for ecological community survey data" (O'Brien et al), submitted to Ecological Informatics. The paper describes an approach for harmonizing and reformatting community survey data such as organism abundance or cover measurements. Data currently using this data model and workflow approach are from the repository of the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI), the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network, and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). Data were assembled for this analysis in late 2020. The inventory is composed of two tables, describing data from EDI (including LTER) and data from NEON. The EDI inventory includes information for 70 datasets: identifiers for both the original and converted datasets, and basic coverage information such as temporal coverage (range of years and a measurement of sampling evenness), spatial coverage (maximum bounding coordinates and area of the "bounding box"), and taxonomic coverage (taxonomic classes). The NEON inventory contains information from 11 continent-wide NEON data products, divided into individual field sites to be more spatially compatible with EDI and LTER data. Taxonomic coverage is by group (e.g., algae, birds) rather than explicit taxonomic classes. Spatial coverage is the area of a field sampling site polygon. Temporal coverage includes the same minimum and maximum sampling years and temporal evenness measures as for the EDI data plus a count of months during that period when sampling occurred. At the time of data download, NEON data was considered provisional, however identifiers are persistent and now deliver final, "released" data. Also included in the data package is a script to reformat inventory data and create Figure 3 of the paper.