LTER sites are actively deploying, operating, or exploring establishment of sensor networks and there is a need for coordinated training on useful tools and strategies for managing the high volume of streaming data and associated metadata. A training workshop that was cost-shared among the LTER Network Office, the NCEAS’s Kepler REAP Project, and DataONE in May 2012 demonstrated very high demand for this type of training with over 70 applicants for 24 openings. This year the San Diego Super Computer (SDSC) Data Turbine development group is willing to cost-share this training.
There is almost universal attention to understanding climate trends and variability as a basis for ecological research in the LTER network, and climate records are long enough (>3 decades) at almost all LTER sites to undertake meaningful quantitative analysis for site-level assessment of ecological responses and cross-site comparisons of responses to climate change.
This training workshop will focus on three topics related to the remote acquisition of environmental sensor data typical of LTER sites: 1) photovoltaic power systems, 2) Wi-Fi networking and telemetry systems, and 3) sensor theory and datalogger programming. We will employ a combination of field demonstrations, lectures, hands-on exercises, and discussions to illustrate these concepts. The target audience will include graduate students, technicians, post-doctoral associates, and early career faculty members who anticipate research needs in one or more of these areas.
We aim to increase the capacity of LTER sites to communicate effectively with a variety of stakeholders and to document effective communication practices across the LTER Network. To meet this goal, we ask for funds to support a training workshop for site science communicators that will take place at the LTER Network Office’s training labs in Albuquerque between spring and summer (March–June) 2013.
Background: The Sevilleta LTER possesses a large network of diverse research sites, weather stations, and webcams interconnected by a wireless network that can be remotely accessed by researchers around the world. Presently, there are approximately thirty networked research sites comprising of over fifty dataloggers, thousands of sensors, and several webcams distributed over more than 100 square miles of the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge.
The course will cover aspects of the entire data life cycle. Best practices will be introduced including metadata content, data cleaning, database design, management of large data volumes and quality control. Best choices of technologies for various tasks will be discussed and supplemented with hands on exercises in using workflow engines, spreadsheets vs. databases, and web publishing technologies.
Many content sections of an EML documents may now be easily standardized, improving on discoverability and potentially easing the development of the documents. This is due to the fact that some pertinent information in authoritative databases is now available via webservices. This workshop will show LTER Information Manager how to access this information, transform it into EML format and insert it into EML documents.
The Drupal Environmental Information Management System (DEIMS) (San Gil et al, 2010) group is building an information management system based on the open source Drupal Content Management System. Drupal is used for managing information, from the database backbone to the dynamic website portal look and feel.
Objective: Convene a three-day training/planning workshop in Spring 2012 that provides LTER investigators, LTER graduate students, and others with a theoretical orientation, practical skills, and the research tools to document local ecological knowledge and integrate that knowledge with spatial analysis and other forms of scientific data to understand social-ecological resilience
There is strong interest among LTER sites in the establishment and management of sensor networks and there is a need for coordinated training and tool sharing. Coincidentally, NCEAS is planning a training workshop on sensor tools within the Real-time Environment for Analytical Processing (REAP) project context. We propose a single LTER/NCEAS cost-shared training that will focus on software tools for managing sensor data. Introductory material on requirements for building a sensor platform and sensor management system will be presented.
