The management of data and data resources created by different research activities are heavily influenced by various research philosophies and sampling strategies. Within long-term environmental research (LTER) projects data on flows of individuals, chemical substances and other biotic and abiotic materials are collected by different project partners and institutions. This leads not only to different data bases, but also to incomparable data sets. Therefore, a virtual research environment (VRE) for research projects concerning environmental management should be worked out. The facilities of data sharing, interactive data collaboration and data storage as well as the communication within a project team by metadata are in the focus of a VRE which have to be optimised by WEB 2.0 and other collaboration tools. From this background the FOSS application “GeoNetwork – Opensource” (GNOS) is aimed to be used as a central component for data management in a VRE.