The contribution and reuse of LTER data in the Provenance Aware Synthesis Tracking Architecture (PASTA) data repository

Sites in the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network have now contributed greater than 5000 data packages into the LTER Network Information System (NIS). This corpus of data and metadata allows us to analyze characteristics of data from the LTER program, including temporal coverage, data format, rate of submission, volume of data, and ecological characteristics of the data (e.g., ecosystems, processes, organisms). In addition, data/metadata congruence checks included in the Provenance Aware Synthesis Tracking Architecture (PASTA) underlying the NIS allow us to examine the quality of metadata submitted. Initial records of data use and citation provide the means to evaluate the efficacy of this repository in disseminating data throughout a broader community - 89 citations of data packages found in 52 articles have been documented to date.