2001 LTER Site Flash

ARC

Jim Laundre

The Arctic LTER site review occurred this summer. The review team consisted of Alan Covitch, Karen Baker, Don Zak, Steve Running and Dennis Knight. Henry Gholz, Neil Swanberg and Jane Dionne from NSF also attended. This team reviewed two sites. The team started in Fairbanks, reviewing Bonanza Creek LTER, and then traveled north to Toolik Field Station for the Arctic LTER review. Unfortunately I was not at Toolik during the site review but Karen Baker and I discussed data management of the Arctic LTER by phone. In addition, several of the Arctic LTER research assistants involved with data management were at Toolik during the review and Karen Baker was able to talk with them about our management policies.

This spring we redesigned our web site. We decided to use frames to make navigation and maintenance of the site easier. Our web site will be continually evolving. Any suggests and comments are welcome.

Toolik Field Station is a remote site and therefore it is difficult to maintain an up to date and complete reprint library. We decided to have a CD ROM created with all the LTER related publications including thesis of students who have worked at Toolik. Since these were to be full articles and not just abstracts we needed to get permission from each publisher and to properly cite each publication on the CD. Their only restrictions are that we not distribute copies of the CD. Root Technologies scanned the publications with the final cost about $675 for about 110 articles. We are still in the process of getting publisher’s permissions so a second CD will be forth coming.

As of July 19 Toolik Field Station is connected to the Internet. All the buildings are inter-connected by a wireless LAN with a fiber optic connection to the University of Alaska network. Inside the buildings are switched hardwire drops. The next stage is to add phones over IP. This will increase the number of phones from the current 3 to 10.

Other planned improvements to the station are new sleeping dorms and a science support building. The science support building will add a year-round heated room, which would enable the LAN to operate during the winter.

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