Synthesis of ecological data is a major vehicle for addressing questions that span a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Useful syntheses should be reliable, reproducible, and repeatable. Such synthesis requires access to data, accurate and precise descriptions of those data (metadata), and documentation of the analytical processes used to derive usable datasets from collections of raw data that may be massive and may include real-time data streams. We describe a formal representation – an analytic web – that provides clear, complete, and precise definitions of scientific processes used to process raw and derived data. The formalisms used to define analytic webs are adaptations of those used in software development, and they provide a novel and effective support system for the synthesis of ecological data. We illustrate the utility of an analytic web through the analysis and synthesis of long-term measurements of whole-ecosystem carbon exchange, and in the construction of a complete, internet-accessible audit trail of the analytic processes used to determine the effect of varying model parameters on estimation of nighttime carbon flux. The analytic web not only increased the ease and speed of processing and synthesizing ecological data but also provided a great leap forward in communicating the results of our efforts. Our software toolset, SciWalker, can be used to create a variety of analytic webs, including webs of webs, tailored to specific data synthesis activities. The process metadata created by SciWalker is readily adapted for inclusion in Ecological Metadata Language