Event

Data sets published in PANGAEA are usually associated with an EVENT (synonyms site, station). An EVENT refers to the sampling event at which the data was obtained. Data submitters must provide sufficient information about these events, the EVENT label and latitude/longitude being mandatory information (for further details, see Basic information that should be provided). EVENT information can be added as separate metadata files, or can also be part of the data table (especially, if a data table includes several sampling EVENTS). If data comes from field campaigns with official sampling events (e.g. stations, as defined in the station lists), the EVENTS presented in PANGAEA correspond to the official sampling events and have the same name (label). To help accelerating the editorial workflow, it is helpful to provide the station list to the data editor. For a majority of German vessels such lists are curated in PANGAEA. To access them, please check the Expedition site and select the respective vessel to find the official station lists. For measurements that are not subject to official sampling events, the data authors can define the name of the EVENT themselves, but must follow nomenclature rules (see below).

Each EVENT is unique and must be clearly identifiable based on its metaheader (coordinates, times, measurement methods etc., see below). With an exact description, EVENTS can be recognizable by other data providers or users. EVENT details appears in the metaheader of the data set.

Providing detailed EVENT information is generally mandatory, but in a few cases, data published in PANGAEA may not be georeferenced (please ask the editor in charge for further information).

Examples for EVENTS
EVENT is a rather generic term, depending on the type of data it can refer to (for example):
 * Stations (during a cruise, expedition, field campaign)
 * Deployments of sampling devices / sensors (device operation ID)
 * Sampling events/ measurements along a transect / profile
 * Sampling / observation time series
 * Geographical origin of organisms (also of culture organisms)
 * Time and space limited surveys
 * Mappings
 * Moorings
 * Multiple investigations at a single site
 * Field experiments
 * Sample labels

Basic information that should be provided

 * Label is the name of a sampling/measuring EVENT (for details on how to label EVENTs, see below).
 * Optional label may be used if the same EVENT has different labels (see below).
 * Method is a tool, gear or method used to take a sample or to measure something. If several measurements were performed at the same EVENT, the “Multiple investigations” method is selected. In this case, methods must be specified in the dataset/parameter descriptions.
 * LATITUDE and LONGITUDE in decimal degree (positive for North, negative for South, WGS84) are mandatory for georeferenced data.
 * ELEVATION positive above mean sea level, negative below mean sea level - e.g. for specifying a location of a sediment core site at the bottom of the sea
 * DATE/TIME (ISO-format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss as coordinated universal time, UTC) should be provided if available.
 * If an EVENT is a profile with a start and end point, all Latitude, Longitude, Elevation and Date/Time for start and end must be specified separately.
 * Project, Campaign associated with the EVENT.
 * Location is the geographical location (e.g., North Sea; Espoo, Finland).
 * Comment may be used to add free text which should be closely event specific (no limit of characters).
 * Keywords can be used to define specific groups of EVENTS.
 * URI links to a more detailed description of an EVENT, e.g. on an external web page or a document.


 * Additional attributes give the possibility to add more sampling information.
 * Sensor URI gives the link to sensor metadata information stored in Sensor information system https://sensor.awi.de/, see example:.
 * IGSN gives the link to International Geo Sample Number.
 * Penetration maximum coring depth (in meter).
 * Recovery gives the length of the core (in meter).
 * Number of cores gives the number of cores sampled during a multicorer deployment.
 * Deployment gives the Event label of a station during which a device (e.g. a mooring) was deployed.
 * Recovery is also used for the Event label of a station during which a device (e.g. a mooring) was recovered.
 * Lake water depth gives the total water depth at sampling position in lakes (in meter).
 * River water depth gives the total water depth at sampling position in rivers (in meter).
 * Mesh size gives the mesh size of net devices.
 * Pump volume gives the volume pumped for obtaining a sample.
 * Transect length gives the length of a sampling / measurement transect.

How to provide EVENT information during the data submission?

 * Check whether the EVENT already exists in PANGAEA.
 * In the PANGAEA search, all data sets related to a specific EVENT can be searched for with the following input: "event:label:EventLabel", e.g. event:label:GeoB16224* for all EVENTS with labels starting with "GeoB16224", e.g. "GeoB16224-1" and "GeoB16224-2".
 * EVENTS often already exist when they are part of international expeditions (IODP/ ODP) or cruises organized by PANGAEA host institutes (MARUM, AWI). List of existing EVENTS (station lists) as part of Cruise inventory and cruise data for the German research vessels can be found at the PANGAEA Expeditions page: select vessel and available station lists can be found in the table sorted by expeditions.
 * If the EVENT already exists, use the same EVENT label for your data.
 * If the EVENT was not found in PANGAEA, please provide as much information as possible, preferable as a supplementary text file/table.

EVENT nomenclature
There is a great risk of confusion with event labels. The event labels in the archived data sets should be identical to those that appear in a publication, in the expedition report and in the station lists. In some cases, an additional labeling of events can not be avoided; in this case an Optional label can be used. In the final data set, it will appear behind the event label in parenthesis (example with 3 labels ).

Three different systems exist for labeling events during expeditions:
 * 1) Ship related (based on the ship acronym, e.g. Vema, Polarstern)
 * 2) Institution related (e.g. GIK..., GeoB...)
 * 3) Free format

The label must be unique and does not contain blanks. In the case of stations, this can be ensured by combining the campaign label with the station number, using an underline to join (e.g. Taymyr97_3). Devices or projects should not be replicated in the label to avoid redundancies.