IMPD Fire History charcoal-based Data Ingest Workflow and Quality Control Location of this document: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/data_management/impd-charcoal-based-workflow.txt Change Log 2023 0110: File creation I. Background information The International Multiproxy Paleofire Database (IMPD, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology/fire-history) is an archive of fire history data derived from natural proxies. The IMPD includes data from charcoal in lake sediment records and tree-ring based data including fire scars in the annual growth rings of trees, and tree stand establishment data. The data ingest workflow and quality control of charcoal sediment records is documented via this document: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/data_management/impd-charcoal-based-workflow.txt, and the tree-ring based data ingest workflow and quality control is documented at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/data_management/impd-tree-based-workflow.txt. Complete guidelines for contributing charcoal-based IMPD datasets is located at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology/contributing-data II. Charcoal-based data contribution files and guidelines The workflow begins with the contributor sending data to the World Data Service for Paleoclimatology/IMPD. New data acquisitions arrive typically by email (paleo@noaa.gov), but also possibly on media or via drop box download. Charcoal-based data contributions consist of the following data files: 1. Required: Fire History Charcoal-Based Data Contribution Template which is located at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/templates/impd-charcoal-template.xlsx The “README-INSTRUCTIONS” tab contains complete instructions on what to submit and entering the metadata and data. Each IMPD data site is identified by a unique IMPD Code with is assigned by the IMPD Data Manager. The first 2 characters of the IMPD Code represent the two letter International Organization for Standardization (ISO) country code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes). The next three characters represent the site code, and the last three characters are a sequential numeric index used to uniquely identify files with duplicate country and site codes. 2. Optional: Files containing supplemental information. II. Quality Control, Curation and Ingest Data contributions are inspected by the data manager at the start of the ingest process. The data manager will work iteratively with the investigator to work through any issues in the formatting or description of the data set. The data manager and the original data contributor will also do a final review of the data set upon creation of a public facing landing page for each IMPD data site ingested. As a first step for quality assurance, the contents of Data Contribution Template is done via visual inspection, which includes using information provided in the publication manuscript associated with the dataset. The creation of files to be archived and ingest of metadata into the Paleo Oracle Metadata Database is performed by a Paleo Data Manager as follows: A. Via Excel mactos, the data for each of the three data tabs of Data Contribution Template (charcoal sediments, magnetic suseptibility, and loss on ignition), the respective tag along with the metadata of the Data Contribution Template's metadata tab are transformed into a NOAA/WDS Paleo Template file (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/templates/noaa-wds-paleo-template-instructions.txt). B. The Paleo Oracle Metadata database and PINGMAN Oracle Application Program Express (ApEx) which sits on top of it, are used to create all database metadata records including investigators, funding, and publications, site and location information, using the The metadata and data of the Data Contribution Template as input. Each of the NOAA/WDS Paleo Templates created are then run through the WDS/Paleo QC checker to ensure that metadata are filled out correctly and contain valid information, and that the data table is formatted correctly. III. The NOAA/WDS Paleo Template files to be archived are named according to the IMPD code assigned and the extension is based on the variable measured (.txt for charcoal sediment, .mag for magnetic susceptiblity, and .loi for loss on ignition), and are placed in the FTP archive. IV. Identifiers, Access and Archive Each IMPD charcoal-based dataset ingested into the NOAA WDS-Paleo database, receives a unique internal study identifier for tracking purposes, a DOI for permanent data location, and three metadata records in ISO, DIF and JSON formats. This ingest process results in the data becoming accessible to the end user through the WDS-Paleo search capabilities: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/?dataTypeId=12, and a variety of other Data Access tools located at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology/fire-history On a monthly basis, all WDS-Paleo data are placed in the NCEI long-term archive.