ESA Panel on Vegetation Classification
July 31-Aug 1, 2004 Workshop
2004 ESA Annual Meeting

NOTE: This workshop has passed. There are currently no workshops planned for the near future.

Overview

The ESA Vegetation Classification Panel has recently released VegBank as the first online public archive for vegetation plots. This workshop aims to introduce the participants to the capabilities of VegBank with particular emphasis on locating and extracting vegetation datasets from VegBank for personal analysis and contributing data to the archive for sharing with the ecological community. The Panel sees plant community ecology as being on the brink of a dramatic transformation that will be made possible by the emergence of the new field of ecoinformatics with major impacts across the discipline from community theory and vegetation modeling to classification, management and restoration. Central to this transformation will be access to large data archives such as represented by VegBank.

The workshop will first introduce users to the overall organization and structure of VegBank, including novel but essential features such as concept-based taxonomy for plant taxa and vegetation communities, including the relationship of VegBank to the National Vegetation Classification (NVC/IVC) database. We will train participants to efficiently search for and extract plots for analysis. Participants will also explore the various data potentially associated with plots, such as the taxa observed on the plot, location information, soil attributes, disturbance history, communities to which the plot has been assigned, and other user's interpretations of communities and taxa.

Finally, the workshop will train users in data preparation and submission to VegBank using the desktop tool VegBranch. Many issues pertaining to data irregularities will be addressed, such as standardizing data to match constrained lists of values, matching plant taxonomy to that found in VegBank, handling irregular taxa that ecologists routinely report (e.g. hairy grass #1), and adding metadata that are not part of the original dataset. Participants who successfully complete the course will be awarded the status of "Certified User." Certified users may upload and download plot data, and may add annotations and interpretations to plot records.

Logistics & Applications

The Workshop will be held on Saturday and Sunday before the Annual Meeting (July 31-Aug 1, 2004). Computers will be provided for the hands-on exercise. Space is limited to 25 participants. Due to this limitation and the specialized nature of the workshop, all those wishing to participate MUST apply and be accepted.

Applications are due July 5, 2004.

Cost: $130 per person - Includes transportation back and forth to the Portland State Computer labs, two days of computer training, and morning coffee and bagel at the OCC both days. Lunch and snacks are on your own.

Graduate student participants will receive full reimbursement of the workshop registration fee.

Workshop participants must also be registered for the ESA Annual Meeting. If you do not wish to attend the entire Annual Meeting, you may register for one day at a time. Passes for the days of our workshop, just before the meeting, are available at a reduced rate. The rates for two days are:
      Regular ESA Member - $50
      Student ESA Member - $30
      Regular Non-Member - $100
      Student Non-Member - $40
      K-12/Pre-College Educator - $40
In order to pre-register with one day passes, you must print out the VegBank customized registration form for those wishing to buy one day passes. Select the appropriate rate for the 2 one-day passes as well as the workshop fee. Please mail the filled out form to the address listed at the end of that form along with your payment.
(Note that one-day registration fees explanation can be found on ESA's registration fees page.)

To apply, send an email to help@vegbank.org specifying:

• Your name.
• Your email address.
• Your position.
• Your interest in VegBank.
• If you are a graduate student: the degree you are working on, year expected, and thesis topic.

We will acknowledge receipt of applications and notify participants as soon as possible.

Workshop instructors:

• Michael Lee (University of North Carolina) -- mikelee@email.unc.edu
• Robert Peet (University of North Carolina) -- peet@unc.edu
• Don Faber-Langendoen (NatureServe) -- don_faber-langendoen@natureserve.org
• Michael Jennings (USGS) -- jennings@uidaho.edu

Location

We will meet at the Oregon Convention Center where a bus will take us to the Portland State Computer Labs. After each day's session, the bus will take us back to the OCC. Look for signs at the OCC directing you to where the bus will pick us up. Times are listed below.

If you prefer to meet us at the computer lab, it is located on the Portland State Campus. We will meet in Cramer Hall 1 (location - basement floor NE corner of the building) take the elevator...the best entrance is between Smith Center and Cramer Hall, it will put you on the 1st floor of Cramer Hall, you will need to go down to the basement level. See this map with a highlighted location. Pay Parking is available near Cramer Hall, and it is free on Sunday. See PSU info on Parking.

Agenda

Day 1: Saturday, July 31, 2004
8:30 AM - 5 PM
»Bus departs OCC at 8 AM and returns at 5:30 PM

1. Introduction.
2. Overview of VegBank (the big picture) See overview presentation PPT|PDF
1. Applications and roles of the VegBank archive
2. Plots, observations, interpretations,
3. Classification of communities and organisms, including the NVC standard
4. Connectivity with other database systems

Break

3. VegBank - Basics
1. Searching for data, assembling/downloading a dataset
2. Hands-on exercise.
3. Annotating data in the archive
4. Hands-on exercise

Lunch

4. VegBranch
1. Overview
2. Introduction to sample data
3. Demonstration of data preparation
4. Hands-on exercise

Break

5. Upload the data
6. Loading more complex data
7. Hands-on Exercise

Day 2: Sunday, August 1, 2004
8:30 AM - 4 PM
»Bus departs OCC at 8 AM and returns at 4:30 PM

5. Data Rectification
1. Introduction to rectification
2. Treatment of irregular plants and communities
3. References & parties
4. Hands-on exercise

Break

6. VegBank - Advanced Functions
1. Intellectual property and sensitive data
2. User-defined variables
3. Hands-on exercise 

Lunch

7. Loading complex data
1. Introduction.
2. Advanced functions.
3. Hands-on exercise

Break

4. Manual data entry
5. Hands-on exercise

8. Conclusion and summary discussions