This repository contains the tools/tutorials for pulling together LTER and iOOS Datasets for encouraging cross-talk between ecology, oceanography, and physics communities.

There are a number of communities which have curated comprehensive datasets for environmental data. The data formats across these communities is not necessarily uniform in formatting/metadata standards, querying information is not necessarily straightforward for first time users, and discovering connections between these fields is obfuscated.

In terms of engineering the data, some of the challenge is querying and compiling the data into a usable and comprehensive set. There are a number of factors that need to be considered is nontrivial and the documentation maintained in the combination process.

In terms of science it is important to foster data discovery to encourage hypothesis development, novel collaborations, and provide access to fundamental datastreams.

There are two key tools that need to be developed for a minimum viable product:

• Data Combiner: A tool that will allow a user to query specific datastreams of interest (time, region, fundmental topics) and will pull, unite, and provide meta-data about the stream(s)
• Data Visualizer: A tool that will read in the common frame, and will allow a user to specify the variables of interest, and will generate initial, interactive plots for discovery and exploration