A scientist studying wetlands creates a project template and distributes it to individuals and organizations for data contains a data capture outline and the methodology for data collection.

Naturalists involved in the project can now collect data using the project template created by the scientist.  The observations from each individual are stored in a virtual repository accessible to all on the network.

At any time, the scientist can access the data contained in the virtual repository. Because the data has been collected using standard methods and stored in a common format, the multiple datasets are easily integrated, analyzed and converted into information.

The scientist may also integrate data from other relevant datasets, such as the Cattails project.