FCE

Project Administration and Management

Our first organizational efforts went into formulating an official Program Administration and Management Guidelines document, the “constitution for our LTER Project. We also established an Internal Executive Committee (IEC), which includes 7 voting members (each of whom is the leader of a research Working Group), a member representing Everglades National Park, a graduate representative, and Bruce Hayden, Lead PI of VCR, an “Outside” member. The IEC is charged with voting on all major policy, management, and budget decisions of the project, and the committee meets about every 3 months.

The FCE LTER Program office currently consists of two full-time staff members—an Information Manager (Linda Powell) and a Program Manager (Mike Rugge). We were designated space by Florida International University for the project office, and have furnished it for these two staff as well as to accommodate off-site scientists.

Linda and Mike visited the LTER Network Office in October 2000 to learn about state-of-the-art techniques for managing data, for creating and managing websites, and for linking the two. Additionally, they received great technical information about computer hardware and software that would best suit the FCE project needs. As a result, the FCE purchased a DELL Precision 420 Workstation with Raid 5 disk array (Windows NT 4.0 Workstation OS) (FCE Oracle database resides here), a Dell PowerEdge 1300 Server (Windows NT 4.0 Server OS) (our dedicated Web Server), a DELL Dimension XPS B800r Desktop computer (Windows 2000 OS), and a DELL Inspiron 3800 Notebook computer for the project office. We are using Oracle to manage our databases, Apache/Perl programs for our web server (Windows NT 4.0 Server OS), and Macromedia Dreamweaver software for our website development.

Linda’s major accomplishments as Information Manager this past year have included developing a comprehensive Data Management Policy, collecting ancillary FCE LTER project data, and building a GIS spatial database. She is currently interviewing FCE LTER researchers about their research projects and data requirements to facilitate the design and build phase of our Oracle database.

Mike Rugge has been focused on providing project support for 22 FCE Researchers, 3 FCE Post Docs, 14 FCE Grad Students, and 3 FCE Undergraduates this past year. He has also created the FCE LTER website (fcelter.fiu.edu), which is fully operational and includes links to several data archives and numerous data links pertinent to our LTER research.

Field Site Establishment

Our field sampling is centered around two very long transects in Everglades National Park, with a total of 17 sites. Of these, all required some platform or boardwalk construction except the 3 in Florida Bay. We were able to continue using existing platforms and boardwalks at many of our wetland sites, and by November 2000 we had completed the 6 additional site construction projects necessary to have established all 17 sites. Our field sampling at each of these sites is discussed in more detail below, by each research Working Group.

Project Growth

In our first year, we have added 11 new collaborators and lost one, bringing our site total for PIs and Collaborators to 25. This group represents 4 universities, 1 NGO, 1 state agency, and 4 federal agencies. We have an active Affiliated Graduate Students group, with at least 14 students in the group and with formal site-wide activities that they oversee and organize. The FCE LTER Program currently has about $2,700,000 in related, collateral, and overlap funding (roughly half from federal sources and half from state sources). Our scientists and students have published 5 manuscripts that acknowledge the FCE LTER Program and have presented 10 papers at scientific meetings.

Training, Development, and Outreach

In the first year of the FCE LTER Program, we have participated in the REU training program and are doing so again this year (3 undergraduate students each year). Additionally, we have 14 graduate students who are currently conducting LTER-related research.

The FCE LTER Program has started its FCE Schoolyard LTER Program this summer (2001). The FCE LTER outreach is through teacher education, which is through our Schoolyard LTER Program. Our FCE Summer 2001 Schoolyard program is exclusively focused on experience for high school teachers. The summer program has placed 5 to 6 high school teachers and several high school students in the labs of FCE scientists, where they are completing small experiments of their own and gaining experience with ecological research and with the Everglades. Our primary objective in this approach is to establish relationships between FCE scientists and local teachers that will last well beyond the summer.