ESS-DIVE

Deep Insight for Earth Science Data

Celebrating ESIP Endorsement and Collaboration of the Year Award for the Physical Samples Curation Cluster Guidelines

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We are proud to announce that the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Physical Samples Curation Cluster was awarded the 2026 ESIP Collaboration of the Year at the January 2026 Meeting. The award honors four years of developing the physical sample citation guidelines, now published in Nature Scientific Data, led by Joan Damerow (Damerow et al., 2025 doi:10.1038/s41597-025-05295-z). The Collaboration of the Year award recognizes achievements in works created collaboratively that align with ESIP’s core values and who “step up as excellent data stewards, community organizers, and enthusiastic volunteers” (Gentes, 2026).

Furthermore, these guidelines were formally endorsed by ESIP in March of 2026. This endorsement from ESIP demonstrates community trust in the recommendations and promotes adoption. Learn more about ESIP endorsements here.  

The ESIP Physical Samples Curation Cluster surveyed existing best practices, challenges, and needs gathered through community feedback for research with physical samples spanning geologic cores, water samples, or biological specimens. Based on surveys of current practices and community feedback, the guidelines for researchers include providing rich metadata, using and citing identifiers for samples, and publishing samples in datasets. The framework aims to facilitate a standard way of publishing, giving credit for, tracking, and connecting sample information, thereby improving the tracking, reproducibility, and attribution of data.

Researchers working with physical samples should consider adding these guidelines to their workflows to help better connect their work to the global ecosystem of sample data and promote data reuse. The summarized version is on the ESIP award page while the paper is available on Zenodo.

Damerow, J.E., Raia, N.H., Stanley, V. et al. Opening doors to physical sample tracking and attribution in Earth and environmental sciences. Sci Data 12, 1047 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05295-z 

Featured Image Credit: Gentes, Z. (2026). Celebrating our 2026 ESIP Award Winners. Earth Science Information Partners. Accessed via https://www.esipfed.org/celebrating-our-2026-esip-award-winners/

Joint Cyberinfrastructure Working Groups and ESS-DIVE Annual Meeting 2026

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For a detailed agenda of the Day 1 (May 12) meeting, you can visit the Cyberinfrastructure Working Groups events page. For a detailed agenda of Day 2 (May 13) and Day 3 (May 14), you can visit the workshop event page.

On behalf of the United States Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program, we cordially invite you to attend the Joint Cyberinfrastructure Working Groups and ESS-DIVE Annual Meeting from May 12th to 14th, 2026. The theme this year will focus on “AI-Ready Data and Models”.

This free and virtual event is a chance for modelers, data contributors and data users to join forces, fostering the exchange of valuable insights and expertise on BER data. Whether you are new to the BER program, CIWGs, ESS-DIVE, or have been engaging for a while, this is your opportunity to learn about the latest updates and AI-approaches within our community, and help drive the future of BER data management, integration, and use.

Here’s what you can expect from this year’s meeting:

  • Remarks from BER program managers
  • Updates on ESS-DIVE and CIWGs activities;
  • Lightning session on AI-perspectives across BER and discussions on future direction for BER data use and preparation;
  • Facilitated discussions;
  • AI-Ready data curation with Reporting Formats;
  • Tutorials on how to curate, publish and use data on ESS-DIVE;
  • And more!

Register Now: Registration for the Joint Cyberinfrastructure Working Groups and ESS-DIVE Annual Meeting is now open. While participants are encouraged to attend all three days, they are also welcome to join sessions of their interest. To secure your spot, complete this registration form. Once registered, you will receive a personalized Zoom link, granting you access to the event.

Webinar on Improving and Expanding ESS-DIVE Reporting Formats

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ESS-DIVE Webinar

Thursday, March 26 | 12:00-13:00 PT / 15:00-16:00 ET

View Webinar Recording / Link to Webinar Slides

Join our March webinar to learn about our ongoing work to revise and improve ESS-DIVE reporting formats. We will discuss the planned changes to reporting format structures and templates currently under development by ESS-DIVE and ESS-DIVE’s Partner Projects.

We will share the vision of the upcoming changes and the landscape of reporting formats at ESS-DIVE and highlight key differences between the original and revised versions. There will be time for audience feedback on these changes and Q/A.

If you have previous experience with these reporting formats, collect these data types, or have suggestions for their work, this is the time and place! This webinar is a great opportunity to engage with the development process. 

Please encourage anyone from your project who may be interested to attend.

Webinar on Preserving Project Data Legacy with ESS-DIVE

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ESS-DIVE Webinar

Tuesday, September 30 | 13:00-14:00 PT / 16:00-17:00 ET

View Webinar Recording / Link to Webinar Slides

 

Join this webinar to learn about using ESS-DIVE to maximize the value of your project data. Whether your project is nearing completion, starting a new phase, or preparing for a mid-phase review, this webinar will describe how to use some of the most important ESS-DIVE features for high-quality data preservation. You will walk away with checklists and tools to help preserve your project data legacy. 

During this webinar, we will cover the following topics:

  • ESS-DIVE features that enable future use of your data, including in AI/ML applications,
  • The benefits of being a CoreTrustSeal certified repository,
  • How to use Project Portals to preserve contextual project information, and
  • Considerations for completing final data submission and publication. 

Please encourage anyone from your project who may be interested to attend.


Kim Ely, LBNL
ESS-DIVE Partner Project

ESS-DIVE Updates: Spring 2025

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We are excited to announce the latest ESS-DIVE updates, including:

  • Repository feature upgrades and new documentation
  • Help shape new Reporting Format changes! Take a Partner Projects survey
  • Improved Leaf-Level Gas Exchange Reporting Format v1.1.0
  • Usability enhancements for all Reporting Formats
  • Fusion Database Enhancement
  • ESS-DIVE Metrics Summary

See below for more details, and contact us if you have any questions at ess-dive-support@lbl.gov.

Feature and Documentation Upgrades

Documentation

  • New guidance for updating your published datasets
    • You can update your data or metadata after your dataset is published, if needed.
    • We have a set of guidelines and minimum expectations that can help you decide whether and how to 1) update your publication without altering the original scope, or 2) publish updated data as a new dataset.
  • Enhanced Dataset API Search documentation
    • Getting started with the Dataset API is easier than ever with our updated documentation page. Quickly find our search demos, code examples, and learn what you can do with it.  

Features & Services

Enhanced usability of dataset editor for files

We have worked on several enhancements related to file editing to improve the upload experience that are especially relevant for large data packages with many files. These updates include:

  • Clear messaging when files are still loading in the editor
  • Improved continuous file upload experience when adding many files to a dataset

Data Previews on dataset landing pages 

  • CSV & TSV files that are 20MB or smaller can now be previewed directly on the landing page. The preview is displayed in a table format, and users can scroll through the data to see the contents of the file as well as sort data by clicking on the column headers.
  • Most image and PDF files are also available in previews.

ESS-DIVE Partner Project Surveys

The ESS-DIVE Partner Projects invite you to participate in their surveys, as part of their work to develop or improve existing reporting formats. You can learn more about their projects here. 

If you have previous experience with these reporting formats, collect these data types, or have suggestions for their work, please respond to the surveys below.

Reporting Format: Leaf-Level Gas Exchange v1.1.0

The v1.1.0 update of the ESS-DIVE Leaf-Level Gas Exchange Data and Metadata Reporting Format introduces suggestions for file naming conventions, new data dictionary templates, and the addition of important variables for the Survey datatype. It also features a reorganization of the GitHub repository and clearer instructions, all of which make the reporting format easier to use.

Review the v1.1.0 release notes for specific updates and details.

Reporting Format: Patch Version Updates Released

All reporting formats (listed below) were updated to include the standardized reporting format keywords and terms that are required as a part of the File Level Metadata (FLMD) reporting format. 

The ESS-DIVE reporting format GitHub has been renamed to the “ESS-DIVE Workspace.” If you have any links to the GitHub documentation saved directly, please ensure you update these so they resolve correctly.

Metrics Summary

ESS-DIVE’s Metrics Summary captures our user numbers to-date.