2001 LTER Site FlashCAPPeter McCartney |
The major change at CAP was the move to our new Center for Environmental Studies building (formerly the IGA supermarket). We have approximately the same floorspace but are much more consolidated which should better integrate the IM team with the researchers. We currently have 5 NT servers, with a total of ca 300gb of redundant storage. We acquired an older dual-cpu server which we are setting up as a Linux development server.
We were very pleased with the outcome of our site review in March. Several things have already happened in response to the reviewer’s comments including a retroactive addition of the data manager and field manager’s names to the grant’s signature page. The process motivated us to work on improvements and expand our online list of data titles.
We did a major reorganization of the CAP LTER website to better serve research use, adding new features to display listings of publications, datasets, presentations, personnel, etc. We created a new separate website for the CES Informatics Lab to provide new information pages on lab resources, a knowledgebase of technical notes, etc.
Designed and implemented new project databases, including micro-met monitoring and vegetation biomass at our new permanent plots, the Phoenix parks bird survey, Atmospheric deposition monitoring. Scripts for loading data from Campbell data logger output files were developed and used in the micro-met based studies.
Initiated a new tracking system for projects to register datasets with the central data management. Status information is updated via questionnaire reports to Pis and is viewable on the web on the project description pages.
Initial activities in a cross-site biogeochemical research project began with the creation of an online questionnaire, the results of which will be discussed at a workshop held at the ESA meetings.
We made enhancements to online data catalog providing online viewing of GIS layers with features for displaying, clipping, re-projecting and downloading data files. We added user registration features for tracking data access and allowing secured access to restricted data. The data catalog uses the metadata to configure on-the-fly connections to the datasets objects for display and query. We added new GIS data such as tax assessors aerial photo imagery, USGS seamless Digital Raster Graphics imagery, and various other datasets acquired via the GIS lab. Approximately 80 GIS vector data layers (lines, points, and polygon data as opposed to image data) were transferred from ArcView format to ESRI Spatial Database Engine. This provides a more powerful server-based platform upon which to build internet-based tools for accessing and using GIS data. Following the March site review, an initiative was begun to begin harvesting and archiving data products from the initial pilot projects. A questionnaire was distributed and individual follow-ups to that have now begun with the expectation that completed pilot project datasets will be up online in fall 2001.
The data entry and query features of the Ecology Explorers K-12 outreach website are being ported from Microsoft ASP to JSP and the interface modified to be more user friendly to K-12 users. One protocol has been completed and a student has been hired for August to finish coding the remaining protocols. Forms were made simpler and upload processing was streamlined to make entry and download smoother.
Access to the main CAP LTER monitoring databases was added to the Ecology Explorers Data Center for a few datasets - this will expand as temporary restrictions are removed to major datasets such as Survey 200.
We participated in the development of a final draft for an ASU implementation of an ecological metadata standard. This work has been done in collaboration with the Network Office and with the National Center for Analysis and Synthesis. We completed our ASU version of the Integrated Taxonomic Information System database and have integrated this with ASU collections and LTER populations databases. Using BDI-developed tools, curators now assume the collective responsibility for maintaining taxonomic information in this shared database system hosted at CES. Collaboration is being developed to extend the network of integrated collections databases to include U of Arizona, Northern Arizona U, and the Desert Botanical Garden. Database designs and software developed by BDI have been provided along with some start up support to ensure interoperability between these databases and upcoming query tools to be developed this year. GA Robin Schoeniger worked on unified web query system for multiple biological collections databases (four from ASU, one from UCSB). In June, 2001, Robin was hired as a full time academic associate and is now developing the XML based data query and display system to be used in all our web applications.
ASU biological databases were integrated with the University of Kansas Natural History Museums Species Analyst, a networked based search system for querying multiple museum collections across the country.
Development of various low-level components that will be used through the summer to finish building two major application products- the metadata Wizard, a tool for generating metadata descriptions of databases and an XML-based query engine that will permit flexible search interfaces into complex and heterogeneous database systems.
McCartney served as NSF panelist for Postdoctoral fellowship awards in Bio-Informatics.
CAP personnel participated in a workshop on Ecological Metadata Language 2.0. April 2-4, Albuqueque, NM. Collaborative effort between the BDI project, Network Office and National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis to finalize a standard for ecological metadata.
McCartney served a second year as member of the LTER Information Management executive council and hosted the annual meeting of IM Exec at CES in April, 2001.
McCartney co-instructed two ILTER workshops on information management: one at Institute for Botany, Vacratot, Hungary, October 30-November 6, 2000 and another at Mongolian Technological University, Ulaan-Baatar, Mongolia, July 7-11, 2001
New award of 170K from NSF for "Completion of Sonoran Desert and ASU Lichen Databases, Nash PI, Gries (coPI), McCartney(coPI)
Planning begun for a collaborative proposal for data entry and image digitization of biological collections at several instutions in Arizona.. This project builds on the technical work of the BDI.
Planning initiated for a project in environmental data mining. Two meetings held at SDSC and one at ASU. Initiated as an independent effort to develop collaboration with SDSC, this project has now been aligned with a developing proposal to develop a valley-wide data sharing framework upon which to build a decision-support application for environmental planning. Planning will continue through summer with ITR as a likely target competition.