Ecological Metadata Language
Encyclopedia
Ecological Metadata Language (EML) is a metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

 standard developed by and for the ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

 discipline. It is based on prior work done by the Ecological Society of America
Ecological Society of America
The Ecological Society of America is a professional organization of ecological scientists. Based in the United States, ESA publishes a suite of publications, from peer-reviewed journals to newsletters, fact sheets and teaching resources. It holds an annual meeting at different locations in the...

 and others, including the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. EML is a set of XML schema
XML schema
An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself...

 documents that allow for the structural expression of metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

. It was developed specifically to allow researchers to document a typical data set in the ecological sciences.

EML is largely designed to describe digital resources, however, it may also be used to describe non-digital resources such as paper maps and other non-digital media.

The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity project has developed a software client specifically to address this need. Morpho is data management software intended for generating metadata in EML format. Morpho is part of the DataONE
DataONE
Data Observation Network for Earth is a project supported by the National Science Foundation under the DataNet program. DataONE will provide scientific data archiving for ecological and environmental data produced by scientists worldwide. DataONE's stated goal is to preserve and provide access to...

Investigator Toolkit, and therefore intended to facilitate data sharing and reuse among ecologists and environmental scientists.
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