Linked Open Data of Ecology (LODE): A New Approach for Ecological Data Sharing

The purpose of this paper is to report and discuss the use of a linked data approach on existing related databases on forest fires, plant specimens, insect collections, forest dynamics plot censuses, and Taiwanese species checklists. We adopted the linked data approach to connect together data intrinsically related from distributed databases. The approach developed a workflow through 4 steps to integrate and publish human- and machine-readable ecological data as linked open data on the web. Results from our work can be found at the web site http://ecowlim.tfri.gov.tw. We conclude that the linked data approach is a new way to improve and advance ecological data sharing.