Lesson on OpenRefine for ecology

• This data set is derived from The Portal Project Long-term desert ecology project data. This data file was downloaded and then modified specifically for use with OpenRefine.
  • Taxon names were put back into the file.
  • Globally Unique Identifiers (in the form of UUIDs) were added.
• These modifications were made in order to illustrate some features of Open Refine.
  • Errors were added to the taxon names (scientificName field), to demonstrate OpenRefine's ability to find likely mis-entered data.
  • These errors can be found using clustering algorithms on the scientificName column, showing the power of the algorithms to find discrepancies quickly and making it simple to fix all issues found.

• For someone already familiar with OpenRefine, it would be a very simple matter to substitute a different data set, as desired.