INTRODUCTION

• The Konza Prairie Biological Station LTER (KNZ) is dedicated to having all long-term data sets and key short-term data on-line and available to the scientific community and general public. Our goal is to have data on-line within two years of collection, processing and the completion of appropriate quality control procedures. We recognized that KNZ LTER researchers have an obligation to make available all LTER funded data to the KNZ LTER database and to publish those data in a timely fashion. We also recognized that investigators must have a reasonable opportunity for first use of data they have collected. KNZ LTER data are defined and processed for online access according to the protocols outlined below.

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• Type I: Core, long-term data sets (with associated meta-data) that address Konza LTER objectives and hypotheses as outlined in LTER proposals I-IV and that are supported primarily by LTER funds. These data will be available on-line one year after data are generated and quality control is completed. We recognized that some data sets will take longer to get on-line than others due to the time required for adequate quality control or due to the demand for certain data by others.
• Type II. Short-term data sets supported primarily by LTER funds, key short- or long-term data sets supported by other funding, graduate student data sets, discontinued long-term data sets, one-time surveys, etc. Data sets in the above categories that are supported primarily by LTER funds must be made available to the data manager/PI’s and may be placed on line within 2 years of completing quality control -- but only at the discretion of the data manager/PIs. Data not supported by LTER funds will be placed on line only if mutually agreed upon by the investigator(s) and the data manager/PIs.

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PLEASE GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE!!!

Finally we ask all publications, reports and proposals who use any data from KNZ acknowledge cite the KNZ program using the following statement: "Data for XXX was supported by the NSF Long Term Ecological Research Program at Konza Prairie Biological Station"; where XXX is the list of data sets used in the publications, reports or proposals.