The Terrestrial Carbon (TerraC) Information System to Facilitate Carbon Synthesis Across Heterogeneous Landscapes.

There are urgent needs to better synthesize knowledge and data across large regions and time periods to address global climate change, conduct soil/terrestrial carbon accounting, model carbon dynamics, assess carbon sequestration, and develop strategies for mitigation and adaptation. To address these needs we developed the Terrestrial Carbon (TerraC) Information System dedicated to advance soil/terrestrial carbon science. TerraC offers user-friendly tools to upload, store, manage, query, analyze, and download lab and field data characterizing carbon in soils, plants/biomass, atmosphere, water, and whole ecosystems. The purpose of TerraC is three-fold to: (i) advance carbon science through sharing of carbon and ancillary environmental data; (ii) facilitate environmental synthesis; and (iii) enhance collaboration among students, faculty, scientists, and extension specialists through shared resources. Data and metadata stored in TerraC can be shared privately among selected users (groups) or publicly with any user. We integrated various spatially-explicit soil carbon and ancillary environmental data collected in Florida representing different time periods, and conducted a synthesis analysis on soil carbon that will be presented as a case study. Detailed information about TerraC and data sharing options are available at: http://TerraC.ifas.ufl.edu.