IsoBank
IsoBank will likely be the canonical repository for all stable isotope data. It is currently near the middle of its planning stages. I have just returned from the IsoBank workshop at the University of New Mexico and the enthusiasm can not be overstated.IsoBank started with an idea that was first published in 2015 by Pauli, Steffan, and Newsome in BioScience (see reference below). Following a second publication (Pauli et al. 2017) and successfully securing NSF funding, their idea began to gain traction.
Now after several meetings the gory details of what is means to create a database of stable isotope data are in full view with much of our discussion centering on meta data. The contextual information that will allow anyone looking at a δ15N value from IsoBank to make sense of it. This group is very much up to the task. I sit on the QA/QC committee and feel our tasks are rather straight forward compared with other committees looking at a mountain of location data, tissue types, sample preparations, museum specimens, etc.
- Pauli JN, Steffan SA, Newsome SD. (2015). It Is Time for IsoBank. BioScience 65 (3) 229–230. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biu230.
- Pauli JN, Newsome SD, Cook JA, Harrod C, Steffan SA, Baker CJO, Ben-David M, Bloom D, Bowen GJ, Cerling TE, Cicero C, Cook C, Dohm M, Dharampal PS, Graves G, Gropp R, Hobson KA, Jordan C, MacFadden B, Birch SP, Poelen J, Ratnasingham S, Russell L, Stricker CA, Uhen MD, Yarnes CT, Hayden B. (2017). Why we need a repository for isotopic data. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (12) 2997-3001. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1701742114.