Background Information

Data available on this web site were originally provided by the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER project and other primary sources listed below:

• National Estuarine Research Reserve Centralized Data Management Office
• U.S. Geological Survey Water Resources Office
• NOAA National Climatic Data Center
• University of Georgia Marine Institute

All acquired data were processed using technology developed by the GCE-LTER Project to produce standardized metadata, data products, and plots optimized for inter-comparison with GCE project monitoring data. Examples of processing steps include renaming columns, unit inter-conversion, date/time conversion to GMT, addition of calculated date/time columns, geographic coordinate re-projection, additional QA/QC flagging to indicate questionable or invalid values, and generation of metadata (documentation) based on templates developed for each data source.

Note that documentation for each data set, when provided by the data distribution center, was incorporated into the GCE data set metadata. Metadata provided with these data are therefore a composite of original metadata descriptors and descriptors automatically generated by GCE data processing programs.

» Disclaimer and Use Agreement

Users of these data are asked to adhere to the disclaimers, data use agreements, and citation instructions provided in the metadata (documentation) for each data set. Users should acknowledge both the data set originator and GCE-LTER project in any published work based on these data.

Extensive efforts are made to ensure that documentation and calculations are accurate, but the GCE LTER program cannot take responsibility for any errors that may exist in these data. Furthermore, the user assumes all responsibility for errors in analysis or judgment resulting from use of these data.