The METS RCN commenced in 2021, funded by the the National Science Foundation (NSF). Read the full proposal.

This project will support coordination efforts that bring together participants in large- and small group formats to foster the necessary dialog to develop Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data solutions and practices. The project will include a Consensus Building Workshop and METS Data Working Group to develop reference implementations of a data model for adoption by the METS community; formation of regional METS user networks and a Broadening Users Workshop to identify the needs of a broader range of data end users and associated data interfaces and tools to meet those needs; and a Data Hackathon to build capacity to ingest, analyze, and integrate METS data with other disciplinary and cross-disciplinary data to accelerate scientific discovery.

The objectives are to:

Bring together members of the oceanographic, data science, and informatics communities to build consensus on key components of a FAIR data model for METS, including common vocabularies, metadata reporting standards, and data citation practices
Engage broader METS data users, including modelers, educators, and decision makers, to facilitate broader applications of METS data and foster collaborations and regional networks to address climate and environmental challenges
Identify use cases to develop reference implementation of data workflows that can be adopted by a range of METS data users
Build community capacity for METS data analysis, statistical methods and data-model integration

This project will develop community consensus for a FAIR METS data model. The METS RCN will leverage the wealth of oceanographic coordination and community building experience and staff capacity of the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Project Office and the infrastructure, expertise, and extensive METS data handling experience of the Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO), along with an RCN Steering Committee that comprises expertise in the fields of oceanography, data science, earth system models, statistics, and data synthesis.

FAIR Data Workshop

International Workshop on FAIR Data Practices for Marine Ecological Time Series – April 22-25, 2025 (BIOS, Bermuda)

As its final in-person activity, the METS RCN will convene an international workshop on FAIR Data Practices for Marine Ecological Time Series at BIOS in Bermuda. The workshop will bring together globally distributed biogeochemical and biological ocean time series representatives who are interested and committed to FAIR data practices with data managers, informatics experts, and statisticians to:

Share new biogeochemical and biological metadata templates to enable increased discoverability of ocean time series data
Share new science outcomes across globally distributed ocean time series programs
Update recommendations on sampling and analytical protocols from the 2012 Bermuda Time Series Methods Workshop
Co-develop best practices for responsible use of ocean time series datasets (as a contribution to the Ocean Best Practices System repository)
Convene hackathon activities on METS data uptake, synthesis, analysis, and visualization

Learn more

Biogeochemical time series synthesis product published

Synthesis Product for Ocean Time Series (SPOTS)

The recently published SPOTS pilot provides biogeochemical essential ocean variables from 12 ship-based fixed time-series scattered around the globe covering the period from 1983 until 2021. An extensive quality assessment enables the straightforward detection of method changes, and in combination with further introduced data quality indicators, the pilot enhances the inter- and intra-station comparability of the included time-series stations. The stations in SPOTS represent unique open ocean and coastal marine environments in the Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, Caribbean, and the Nordic Seas. More than 100,000 water samples are harmonized into one consistent, FAIR, and readily available data synthesis product. Learn more about SPOTS.

Lange, N., Fiedler, B., Álvarez, M., Benoit-Cattin, A., Benway, H., Buttigieg, P. L., Coppola, L., Currie, K., Flecha, S., Gerlach, D. S., Honda, M., Huertas, I. E., Lauvset, S. K., Muller-Karger, F., Körtzinger, A., O’Brien, K. M., Ólafsdóttir, S. R., Pacheco, F. C., Rueda-Roa, D., Skjelvan, I., Wakita, M., White, A., and Tanhua, T.: Synthesis Product for Ocean Time Series (SPOTS) – a ship-based biogeochemical pilot, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 1901–1931, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1901-2024, 2024.

Dive in to METS RCN activities

Activity 1

Consensus building to advance METS data cyberinfrastructure

Activity 2

Building data analysis capacity

Activity 3

Broadening METS data end users

Activity 4

METS data working group

About this RCN

The METS RCN will support coordination efforts that bring together different cross-sections of the METS community (data producers, users, scientists, and managers) in large and small group formats to foster the necessary dialogue to develop FAIR data solutions and practices.