A storage space or container for monitoring or research data that may include Measurements, Metrics, and/or Indicators. Typically repositories are set up by Organizations to hold data generated by one or more Monitoring Programs; however, some repositories hold data from multiple organizations and/or monitoring programs and some don’t hold raw data, but instead offer summaries of data, such as technical reports, publications, or figures/graphs displaying data.
Ideally, these repositories are online relational databases (not just text files or spreadsheets) and accessible to the public, or at least accessible via a user account (that requires logging in). A single data set generated by a Method does not constitute an Data Repository.
Note: In monitoringresources.org, we now call these “Environmental Information Repositories” the updated name more accurately reflects the types of data the monitoring community is interested in tracking. You can view the full list of Environmental Information Repositories.
