Understand data source

Identify, find, and read data source

Data sources can be identified in a number of different ways but will generally be nominated by an expert in the field in connection for a specific desired re-analysis. Reading the data source can include reviewing manuscripts from the primary literature and their supplemental information, or published agency reports. Specific attention should be paid to the methods section, and any tables or figures. Generally there will be a specific re-analysis identified and understanding should be targeted towards this purpose.

Example:

Townsend, A.R., Vitousek, P.M. and Trumbore, S.E. (1995), Soil Organic Matter Dynamics Along Gradients in Temperature and Land Use on the Island of Hawaii. Ecology, 76: 721-733. https://doi.org/10.2307/1939339 is identified as a data source for the Hawai'i Soil Organic Carbon Database https://osf.io/hmtv6/ as part of the HiCSC.

Summarize and propose plan

Write a short summary of the data in the data source. This should include an overview of all the data in the source and highlight specific sections or components for fit-for-purpose rescue. You should identify key information in the methods section, individual tables and figures. This summary is intended to provide a proposal for the data rescue plan to be reviewed by an expert.

This paper looks at soil organic carbon stock and radiocarbon age across a gradient of elevations of two land uses (pasture and forested). They use this data to fit soil carbon pools in a three pool first order linear model.

• Location: The methods section in this paper does not have specific latitude/longitude of the sites but does give detailed regional descriptions which could be used to infer specific latitude and longitude. Year of observation is given in text.
• Soil carbon stock: Depth of sample and area-density of soil organic carbon is given, unclear how coarse fraction was corrected for or bulk density assessed.
• Soil type: Detailed soil history and classification provided in methods section. Udic Andisol

Figures and tables

• Figure 1: Soil pH values
• Table 1: Soil carbon, respiration, biomass, radiocarbon, pasture age, and forest-derived SOC
• Table 2: Seasonal variation in soil respiration, temperature, and moisture
• Figure 2: Pasture age vs radiocarbon
• Table 3: Model performance summary
• Table 4: Modeled pool size
• Table 5: Soil incubation cumulative totals
• Figure 3: Soil depth vs age
• Figure 4: Pasture site vs forest-derived carbon
• Table 6: Estimated passive pool
• Figure 5: Modeled vs observed 13C
• Figure 6: Half-life of intermediate SOM vs mean annual temperature
• Table 7: model sensitivity results

Data Rescue Plan

The data rescue plan will focus on location and soil organic carbon estimations.

1. Copy the following methods section by paragraph: Study site and soil carbon
2. Copy Tables 1 and 2 dropping the significance exponents to get the relative change in temperature, moisture, and SOC across land use. Some columns contain two parts information (units and elevation), separate these in the transcription.
3. Pull in meta data for tables including caption.
4. Encode sample size, elevation, land use definitions, soil types, and mean climatology from method section.

Expert review

Pass the summary and proposed plan to a reviewer. This reviewer should have some degree of familiarity of the methodologies used in the study and the proposed reanalysis. The reviewer should consider check that: Does the summary reflect the paper while being shorter then the paper itself? Does the identified elements in the data rescue plan serve the purpose of the reanalysis?