Introduction > Submitting data

How to submit data

Data Portal

The data portal of ICP Forests to be used for submissions and downloads is available under:

https://www.icp-forests.org/data

Further information on how to use the data portal is available here:

What to submit?

A data submission always consists of all measured data of a survey from one year.

A complete set of forms (tables) includes:

  • a reduced plot file

  • data files

  • data accompanying reports (optional)

  • a laboratory QA file called LQA (in case of surveys with data from laboratory analyses)

Format of submission files

The data will be submitted as CSV files with following specification:

  • encoding: UTF8

  • column separator: ; (semicolon)

  • quotation marks for text fields: NONE

Plain CSV files of all forms are available as zip archive:

https://icp-forests.org/documentation-adds/csv-templates/csv_templates.zip

Header of submission files

The header is the first line of each form and holds the names of submitted attributes separated by a semicolon. It is mandatory to submit the header. Please make sure that:

  • The first line starts with a exclamation mark

  • The order of attributes follows the respective form description in this documentation.

Example (System Installation Level II plotfile):

!Sequence; country; plot; latitude; longitude; X; Y; altitude_m; altitude; plot_design; orientation; slope;date_installation; plot_size; status_plot; status_NFI; other_observations

Data formats

Valid data formats for attributes:

  • I: Integer

  • F: Floating point number

  • C: Character

  • DATE/TIME: date or time values (exact format will be specified in the respective explanatory item or in the form definition)

  • Y/N: “Y” for “yes” - “N” for “no”

Decimal separator: point

Detection limit

Values below the detection limit should be submitted as “-1” .

The amount of the detection limit has to be submitted in the associated LQA-Form for the respective parameters.

A “0” (zero) should be used only in case that this is the assessed or measured value; e.g. for “precipitation” (if no precipitation during the respective period was observed), for “Weight of oranic layer”, “Carbonates” (Soil) or alkalinity (Soil Solution, Deposition).

Reserved symbols

Following symbols are reverved and cannot be used within the data

  • ’ (single quots)

  • “ (double quots)

  • ; (semicolon - used as column separator)

Form names

The file name of submitted forms has to follow this naming convention:

  • digits 1-2: country code (of the data providing country), see dictionary d_country

  • digits 3-6: survey year (monitoring year the data belongs to)

The file extension is always the form name, separated by a dot.

Example:

042011.PLD would be the correct name of the PLD form from Germany for 2011.

Exceptions:

The naming convention of LQA forms is as following:

  • digits 1-2: country code (see dictionary d_country)

  • digits 3-6: survey year

  • digits 7-8: survey code (see Surveys)

  • digit 9: “.”

  • digit 10-12: form abbreviation “LQA”

Example:

042011FO.LQA would be the correct name of the FO-LQA form from Germany for 2011.

The naming convention of the plot file of System Installation survey is as following:

  • digits 1-2: country code (see dictionary d_country)

  • digits 3-11: “GENER.PLT”

Example:

04GENER.PLT would be the correct name of the SI-PLT form from Germany.

Submitting free files

In addition to the forms, also so-called free files can be submitted to the ICP-Forests database, more details in the ‘user guide of the data portal’.

One can distinguish 3 different types:

Data Accompanying Reports (DAR-Q)

These reports include additional information concerning the data. The content might be further described in the corresponding parts of the ICP-Forests manual.

DAR-Q have to be submitted as “.doc”, “.docx” or “.pdf” files

Photos

Photos can be submitted for the surveys LA, PH and OZ. The exact file name format is described in the Explanatory Item 86

All photos have to be submitted as “.jpg” files.

Additional free files

Additional free files can be submitted for any survey. The content is no further specified.

Additional free files can be of following file types: “doc”, “docx”, “pdf”, “txt”, “xls”, “xlsx”, “jpg”, “zip”