This workshop will provide 1) guidance on best practices in the archiving and analysis of paleoecological data and 2) training in the use of the Neotoma Paleoecology Database (www.neotomadb.org) to archive, access, and analyze paleoecological data. Neotoma is a multiproxy paleodatabase that stores multiple kinds of paleoecological & paleoenvironmental data, including fossil pollen, diatoms, ostracodes, insects, vertebrate fauna, charcoal, and geochemical data.  Neotoma is a public-access, community-supported database that is emerging as the standard repository for Pliocene and Quaternary paleoecological data.

This one-day workshop will include lecture material and hands-on work with paleoecological data. Workshop participants will learn how to search and acquire multiple data types using web tools and to peruse the data using online mapping functions.  Participants will also learn how to use Neotoma’s APIs (Application Programming Interface) and the neotoma R package to write scripts to import Neotoma data into R for further analysis. Participants will be introduced to Tilia as a tool for data entry, metadata entry, and age-model construction.

Participants should bring a laptop computer.  A training version of the latest version of Tilia will be distributed, so participants should have administrative rights on their laptops to install new software. Participants should have downloaded and installed R and RStudio. Both are free to download and work on multiple platforms. Tilia runs on Windows, so this component of workshop requires Windows or Macs with Parallels software. Early-career scientists are especially encouraged but all are welcome.