2001 LTER Site Flash

PAL

Karen S. Baker

PALMER LTER INFORMATION MANAGEMENT field support for the annual January cruise and the seasonal station work includes involvement with logistics, data archive and field procedures in addition to year round weather and biomass data collection. Preparations are underway for the second sea ice study cruise Sep01 to study late winter ice, complementing the earlier sea ice cruise Jun99 to study fall ice formation. Online data files were updated at the end of the 2000-2001 field season. The previous year's relational database software testing (i.e. miniSQL, mySQL, access, SQLserver) stimulated this year's exploration of database environments. Communications for the Palmer team and the LTER network were augmented through electronic facilitation such as shared project work web pages including an ongoing Palmer LTER group data sharing & modeling effort and steering committee review preparation (Mar00 at UCSB; Jun00 WashDC).

The LTER NETWORK INFORMATION SYSTEM, described in a multi-site manuscript (Baker, Benson, Henshaw, Blodgett, Porter and Stafford, Bioscience 2000), is composed of modules that were addressed at the All-Scientist Meeting (ASM) Aug00 in Snowbird, the concurrent Information Manager Meeting, and the Spring 2001 LTER Information Manager Executive Committee Meeting in Phoenix. The LTER site description directory efforts were reviewed and developed at a meeting at the LTER Network Office (Feb01). The multi-tier prototype using SQLserver database software with Perl for web interface developed by Palmer locally was ported and installed at the Network Office. A multi-site authored poster "LTER IM: Paradigm Shift or Paradigm Stretch" was designed for the ASM.

EDUCATION OUTREACH and information management partnership continued. Plans are in place to sponsor a 'Teacher Experiencing Antarctica' participant for the 2001-2002 field season. A Palmer site education poster was created for the LTER ASM where Schoolyard LTER education workshops culminated in a small SLTER working group San Diego Meeting (Dec00) with logistics by Palmer LTER and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). A poster "Long-Term Ecological Research Schoolyard Education Partner" was presented at a subsequent SDSC All-Hands Meeting in February with another planned for the Ecological Society of America this year (Aug01).

COMPUTATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE for the Palmer LTER is provided by the Institute for Computational Earth System Science. A variety of recent upgrades include: Windows NT PC networked workstations with preparations underway for transition to Windows2000; file server upgrades addressing both fiber optic channel and scusi disk storage as part of a three-generational plan supporting both legacy and alternate systems; storage upgrade to 2.5TB for ICESS and 50GB for the Palmer LTER; purchase of large format plotter; establishment of an alternate virtual network identity (pal.lternet.edu); reconfiguration of the apache web server and upgrades for FTP and software services.

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