A follow-up meeting to the successful workshop in April 2007 to develop a data exchange format for plot-based vegetation data was held in June 2008. This second workshop was organised by Nick Spencer and Bob Peet and was again hosted by Duke University's National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in North Carolina. Four members of the original participants (Martin Kleikamp - Germany, Miquel De Caceres - Spain, Bob Peet - USA, and Nick Spencer New Zealand) spent 3 days finalising a draft of the exchange schema in preparation for circulation to the original working group for comment and approval.

From the goals, concepts, and terminology developed during the first workshop, a draft XML-based exchange schema was created that captured all key requirements for transferring plot-based vegetation data from database to database. At present, the four participants are testing the schema against key database systems before circulated it to the wider group for review. Once feedback from the original working group has been incorporated, the schema will be presented at the Taxonomic Database Working Group (TDWG) annual meeting in October 2008 as a proposed standard for plot-based vegetation data exchange.

Last updated August 2008