ForCenS, a curated database of planktonic foraminifera census counts in marine surface sediment samples

Census counts of marine microfossils in surface sediments represent an invaluable resource for paleoceanography and for the investigation of macroecological processes. A prerequisite for such applications is the provision of data syntheses for individual microfossil groups. Specific to such synthese...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific Data
Main Authors: Siccha, Michael, Kucera, Michal
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Nature Research 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/44292/
https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/44292/1/sdata2017109.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2017.109
Description
Summary:Census counts of marine microfossils in surface sediments represent an invaluable resource for paleoceanography and for the investigation of macroecological processes. A prerequisite for such applications is the provision of data syntheses for individual microfossil groups. Specific to such syntheses is the necessity of taxonomical harmonisation across the constituent datasets, coupled with dereplication of previous compilations. Both of these aspects require expert knowledge, but with increasing number of records involved in such syntheses, the application of expert knowledge via manual curation is not feasible. Here we present a synthesis of planktonic foraminifera census counts in surface sediment samples, which is taxonomically harmonised, dereplicated and treated for numerical and other inconsistencies. The data treatment is implemented as an objective and largely automated pipeline, allowing us to reduce the initial 6,984 records to 4,205 counts from unique sites and informative technical or true replicates. We provide the final product and document the procedure, which can be easily adopted for other microfossil data syntheses.