The EcoTrends Project: long-term data provide ecological insights to scientists and non-scientists

Environmental drivers are changing at local to global scales with corresponding effects on ecological dynamics.  Large amounts of data have been collected to document these changes. However, much of the data remain inaccessible to a broad audience.  Therefore, solutions to these environmental problems have been elusive.  The goal of the EcoTrends Project is to standardize, simplify, integrate, and visualize data from diverse terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems to promote understanding and synthesis by a broad audience. Hundreds of datasets from over 50 sites are available online (http://www.ecotrends.info). Currently, the website is primarily used by the scientific community. A new, user friendly website is being developed that will:

1. Access the same long-term ecological database
2. Enable the non-scientific community to find and use the data
3. Utilize suggestions for improvement from high school students and teachers
4. Contain a library of infographics to display data in innovative and creative ways