Working Group Type: Training

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.

Abstract

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.

Goals

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.

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

Abstract

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.

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.

Our multi-institutional, multi-site group mission is to enable data integration and information synthesis from the foundations of the ecological community, at the minimal organizational level (site, field station), with scalability options (up to national clearinghouse)