Annotation of Units from Existing Metadata

A multi-institutional working group has been working on solutions to the problem of similar units being represented differently in ecological metadata, thus hindering efforts to integrate data. We have been able to link over 89% of 300,000+ unit instances in Ecological Metadata Language metadata to the QUDT.org Units Vocabulary and to develop tools for updating metadata with annotations linking different "raw" units (e.g., g/m2, g.m-2, gm/m2, gramPerMeterSquared) to a single URI (e.g., http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/GM-PER-M2). Such annotations will make it easier to associate and integrate data which use diverse raw representations of units.