This getting started guide will help you to access the EcoPlots data portal and give you an overview of the its functionality
To access the EcoPlots data search portal, load the TERN homepage and navigate to the Data menu, then click on EcoPlots.
Alternative you can load https://ecoplots.tern.org.au/ directly in the URL bar at the top of your browser window.
On loading the search page, some rows of data will already be visible. This is because data on site visits is the default display for EcoPlots when no filters have been activated by a user.
Available filters
On the left of the screen there is a list of filters that will allow you to define what data that you wish to find. There are eight different filters that can be used to alone or in combination with others filters during your data discovery search. Each heading with an icon can be expanded to show different options related to that filter. The Clear All Filters button will return you to the default search state displaying rows of the available site visit data.
Region Types and Regions
Geographic areas where data is available.Data Sources, Datasets, Project, Sites and Visits
Restricts output according to data origins.Procedures
Specify the methods of sampling used.Features Types
Subject of sample, estimate, or calculation.Parameters
Data derived from a calculation.Species name
Limit results to a particular taxonomic classification; is not case sensitive.Date Range
Restrict to data collected during a specific time period.Custom Search
Searches all properties/attributes? AND based? OR based? Case sensitive?
More information on definitions for each class is available in the TERN LinkedData Attributes page. The TERN Information Models page contains information regarding the ontological and data vocabularies used.
Tabbed results
Different tabs within the search results panel allow the investigation of search results according to the “feature type” that was assigned at the time of sampling.
This example is the result of a “species name” search requesting genus level data for Melaleucas that have feature type data recorded for individual plants sampled, data about the branch structure of individual plants, details about specimens collected, and data about the characteristics of dead wood sampled that has been identified from this genus.
Questions: 1. Are the feature type results AND based as well as OR based? Alternatively is it one or the other? 2. For the purposes of this context, is a branch a stem?
You can navigate between the different tabs to view of the different subsets of the data that has been output from by the search. It is important to note that multiple tabs generated by your search may be indicative of multiple data files being generated when the data is downloaded.
The next pages in this section give an overview of how to search for data and download data.