VegBranch

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This page describes VegBranch's loading module, which is a set of tables which attempts to represent ecological data in a generic way. These tables are a simplified version of VegBank's tables, which are quite complex. The simplification makes importing data much easier.

The loading module is entirely within VegBranch. The tables in it are not part of the vegbank module. The following is a list of the loading module tables. Each table has an overview as well as details, which provide extensive information for each field, as well as a few examples data rows.

You may also find this graphical representation of the loading tables (from VegBranch) helpful, too.

Party Information (overview ) Information about the different people (parties) involved in your plots, projects, taxa, and classifications.

Species List (overview ) Information about plants in your dataset. This table is used when a simple link to a plant in the vegbank module is not possible from your other loading tables.

Plot Data (overview ) Data that are consistent across a plot. For example, elevation, plot name, plot location, etc.

Plot Normalized (overview ) This table contains normalized information about plot data, specifically: contributors, stratum definitions, and place names.

Presence Data (overview ) One of two tables for entering information about taxa occurring on each plot. Data may also be entered to Strata Cover Loading Table, or to both tables (export users). This table stores each taxon present on each plot.

Strata Cover Data (overview ) One of two tables for entering information about taxa occurring on each plot. Data may also be entered to Presence Data Loading Table, or to both tables (export users). This table stores importance information about taxa on each plot.

Stem Data (overview ) Data about the stems that you measured on the plot.

Stem Classes (overview ) Data about the stems that you measured on the plot, if tallied in size classes and/or lists of DBH values.

Soil Data (overview ) Data about the soils collected from a plot.

Disturbance Data (overview ) Data about evidence of disturbance observed on the plot.

Community Concept (overview ) This table is very similar to the Species List loading table. You may match you community codes to real community names, or add new communities to the vegbank module.

Plot Communities (overview ) Assigns plots to particular communities (up to 4 per record), based on a methodology that you specify.

User Defined Metadata (overview ) Data about what your user defined fields whose values are in the other loading tables.