Ecological Metadata Language (EML) is a metadata standard developed by the ecology discipline and for the ecology discipline. It is based on prior work done by the Ecological Society of America and associated efforts (Michener et al., 1997, Ecological Applications). EML is implemented as a series of XML document types that can by used in a modular and extensible manner to document ecological data. Each EML module is designed to describe one logical part of the total metadata that should be included with any ecological dataset.

We are currently in the process of revising EML to create the version 2.0 standard described below. This is an ongoing process, and the current draft is being released for public comment and input on the revisions. Please continue to use version 1.4.1 in production environments until we have finalized the version 2.0 release. Thanks.

Download EML

Version 2.0 (Proposed, In development)

Version 2 starts with version 1.4.1 as a base and impoves on the design and content of each module based on testing and experience using metadata marked up in EML. Warning: this module is currently being developed and therefore it will change as its form is finalized by the KNB development group. We'll release a final version here when it is available.

EML 2.0 Beta 2 Documentation

• access
• distribution
• iso-party
• package
• resource
• constraint
• research
• entity
• attribute
• quality (unimplemented)
• lineage (unimplemented)