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  ASM 2003

2003 LTER Site Byte

LTER Site: Florida Coastal Everglades

Contributor: Linda Powell (Sep 11, 2003)

Site Byte:

2003 Site Byte:

The Florida Coastal Everglades LTER Program experienced our first mid-term NSF review in March, 2003 and received a strong endorsement from the NSF review team due to our science, strong education and outreach program and the Information Management program. Preparation for our site review motivated our project participants to become better organized and to submit their data (like Wade Sheldon (GCE), I, too, was inundated with new data submissions!).

I am happy to report that this past year has been a very productive ‘data’ year for the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER Program as we now have a total of 87 datasets archived. There are 64 data files publicly available via our website at http://fcelter.fiu.edu/data/. The new ‘data’ section of the FCE web site was created to facilitate the exchange of LTER data, as well as, ‘Everglades related’ ancillary data. Users are able to search both our FCE and FCE ancillary data table of contents by several parameters such as keywords, data category, and data originators. Additionally, there are direct data links to other sources of Everglades and LTER data like the South Florida Water Management District’s DBHydro, USGS’ TIME database, and the LTER Network’s ClimDB.

Supplemental funding provided by NSF for LTER ClimDB/HydroDB participants allowed the FCE IM group to add two new servers to our IM infrastructure: a file server and a dedicated Oracle 9i server. Over the past few months, we have been in the process of migrating all FCE project information, flat file FCE data, and metadata to the Oracle9i relational database. Currently, the FCE LTER data and metadata files from individual research studies are stored in a hierarchical flat file directory system. FCE project information and minimal research data metadata are stored in an MS Access database that is used to drive the FCE Web site. It is our intent to retain the flat files so that the web site users, general public and FCE researchers will have an option to download complete data files originally submitted by individual scientists in addition to downloading queried data from the Oracle9i database.

Additionally, we have started an ArcIMS project to tie FCE research data and resources together with the FCE project information. The ArcIMS project will be made available to FCE researchers via our intranet site and will allow ‘one stop shopping’ for all matters concerning the LTER project. Researchers would be able to graphically select sites of interest and access information about which colleagues are sampling at the location, what parameters are being sampled, where within the site samples are being collected as well as information about funding, publications, related resources, and links to FCE data submitted for those particular locations.