Designing infrastructure to support the management of diverse data presents unique challenges for each site. Described here is the current information system architecture, as well as targeted architectural features, implemented by the Ocean Informatics team to provide a working solution for accommodating heterogeneous data types. The system architecture is a major component of a site information environment, providing an orientation for technical development, organizational communication, and collaborative science.

Designing infrastructure to support the management of diverse data presents unique challenges for each site. Described here is the current information system architecture, as well as targeted architectural features, implemented by the Ocean Informatics team to provide a working solution for accommodating heterogeneous data types. The system architecture is a major component of a site information environment, providing an orientation for technical development, organizational communication, and collaborative science.

 The movement and exchange of data are frequently described using a 'flow' or a 'pipeline' model.  We differentiate a uni-directional data 'flow' from an alternative model, a web-of-repositories. A web-of-repositories is a federation of diverse nodes where communication, connections, and data exchange are multi-directional. Each node has a unique sphere-of-context with technical, organizational and social dimensions. In this poster we explore a multi-repository data landscape.

Units of measurement are a fundamental element of scientific discourse and data integration. The LTER Unit Working Group has developed two initiatives to promote consistent use of units throughout the network. One is the LTER Unit Dictionary, comprising the set of units in use by the LTER sites and the best practices that support them. The other is the Unit Registry, a software solution for online access to the Unit Dictionary. This poster provides an overview of both efforts, including motivations, progress made, and future plans.

 The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) focuses on grand challenge questions in environmental science relevant to large regions that cannot be addressed with traditional ecological approaches. NEON will provide both physical and data infrastructures in order to provide usable information to scientists, teachers, students, citizens, governmental and non-governmental decision makers.

 Land use, invasive species, and climate change are all the results of human modifications of our planet. Humans directly and indirectly force ecosystem changes and we also respond to ecosystem modifications. The human effects on ecosystems can be seen primarily through modifications in land cover and land use. While remote sensing systems can monitor land cover, most human land use (e.g. fertilizer use, grazing intensity, irrigation rate) information require other types of data. NEON requires land use data on the local and continental scale.

    The goals of the EAP-ILTER information management are: 1. to create a data legacy for current and future uses; and 2. to provide policy makers with science-based environmental information. Metadata is one of the keys to achieve the goals. A framework of an ecological information management prototype based on EML is proposed, tested, and evaluated over the last five years in EAP-ILTER.

LTERmaps is an internet interface to LTER site base data.  The application uses internet mapping software to provide access to site locations, boundaries, and Trends data tables.  Several approaches were tried by the inter-site working group including off the shelf internet mapping applications, Google Maps and Google Earth.  The poster will highlight the process of collecting the data for the project, the value of video conference calls during the project, and the types of data configurations tried, and the pros and cons of the different approaches. 

Humanity has profoundly altered the biosphere in many ways. Pervasive human activities have resulted in the perturbation of the main biogeochemical processes and the massive transformation of the land surface on Earth, leading to the massive loss of biological diversity. It has been suggested that new advances in a combination of acoustic sensor technology and wireless sensor networks will provide a great deal of the spatially dense, near-real time biological observations in ways that were previously inaccessible to ecologists and environmental scientists.

The EcoTrends project is an LTER network-level synthesis program geared toward making long-term ecological data highly explorable, accessible and comparable for cross-site synthesis research. Five years of working with 50 sites (LTER, USDA ARS, USFS, and other agencies) have offered many lessons that can be utilized as we strive to improve and upgrade EcoTrends services. Here, we describe the project’s goals and products, discuss lessons learned, and lay out plans for a future system that will better serve the ecological research and information management community.