Sprecher
Beschreibung
Arctic permafrost soil research is significantly limited by the scarcity of reference data. While increasingly more reference data has been published in recent works, it remains scattered among publications, data repositories and institutional archives. Often, the provided data is highly unstructured, important metadata is missing, and previously synthesized databases are becoming outdated and are not detailed enough for machine learning applications. This has led to a significant lack of reliable reference data for permafrost soil research and is particularly relevant in global modelling initiatives, like the Global Carbon Project (GCP).
We developed a new harmonized, standardized, structured, extensive, analysis ready and FAIR soil profile reference database for the northern circumpolar permafrost region, called the Circum-Arctic Soil Permafrost Region database (CASPeR). CASPeR was developed with an emphasis on making it accessible to both the Arctic domain and modelling research community.
CASPeR's extensive metadata gives detailed information on the database attributes, stored using JSON schema and metadata files. This solution offers more flexibility and structure than other commonly used formats (e.g., Excel, text files), but does not require designing complex ontology models. We still make use of such models, reuse existing standards and definitions where possible, and added own definitions if needed. This was and remains a challenging task, as there is not always agreement within the Arctic research community on definitions and semantics, and a lack of structured metadata standards.
Once published, CASPeR will be the largest, most detailed structured soil carbon database for the Arctic permafrost region. We are committed to deliver a high-quality and metadata-rich soil reference database for the Arctic research community. It is planned to distribute CASPeR v1.0 under an Open Source license, together with an interactive dashboard, a Python API for easier access, and a data paper giving an overview on the harmonization methods.