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  ASM 2003

2003 LTER Site Byte

LTER Site: Jornada Basin

Contributor: Ken Ramsey (Oct 15, 2003)

Site Byte:

Introduction
The IM team (Ken Ramsey, Barbara Nolen, and John Anderson) at the Jornada Basin LTER have had a busy and productive year. The remote Tromble weir has been instrumented and data is now harvested from the weir datalogger via spread spectrum wireless. This allows higher resolution data to be downloaded via wireless from the remote site location to campus that was not possible before because of the prohibitive logistics of accessing the site. The web site has been updated with gallaries of maps, posters, and presentations as well as the continuing addition of online data sets.

EML Implementation
David Blankman visited our site and helped modify our database schema to support parsing attribute level EML. David and his crew are currently creating Java applications to allow us to parse our ASCII text files to XML instance documents that can then be parsed by Data Junction to populate and update dataset and project documentation tables in our RDBMS (SQL Server 2000). We will then create EML instance documents by either using the java applications to parse directly to EML or by exporting XML from our RDBMS to XML instance documents which could then be tranformed to EML using a custom XSLT. In addition to developing the Java applications, David is creating another Java application that will transform ESRI ArcGIS metadata XML files directly to EML instance documents using a custom XSLT provided by Peter McCartney of the Central Arizona Pheonix LTER. The transformed ESRI EML instance documents would require some user edits to complete and generate valid EML, such as measurement scale. David's application should allow users to perform these edits before generating EML instance documents. All EML instance documents will be used to populate a Jornada Metacat server to allow web queries and application development based on EML metadata. David Blankman is also going to be coming back to the Jornada later this Fall to give an EML presentation to the Jornada Basin LTER and USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range researchers, technicians, graduate students, post docs, and staff. We are now populating the RDBMS as much as possible in preparation for delivery of the Java applications being developed at the LTER Network Office.

Web Query Application, ClimDB, and Student Programmer
A COM+ web query application which allows tables or views to be queried on most web browsers has been ported to SQL Server. This application will be used to allow searching of dataset and project metadata from the JRN web site. We have hired a part-time student programmer to develop the initial forms and reports needed to manage the Information Managment System RDBMS. The programmer will then work on automating the ClimDB harvesting of JRN climate data. We will be adding several LTER and USDA raingauge networks and weather stations to ClimDB in the coming months. We have been working with SDSC to develop web services to provide ClimDB functionality to JRN climate datasets on the JRN web site as well as updating/participating in ClimDB in a more dynamic fashion.

Network Activities
The JRN information management staff have also been active in LTER Network and related activities in the last year. Barbara and Ken represented JRN at the GIS workshop in San Diego in October, 2002. Ken represented JRN at the 2nd EML workshop in Phoenix last summer and the EML Implementation workshop at the Sevilleta field station earlier this year. Ken represented JRN at the SEEK workflow and concept design workshop in Albuquerque a few weeks ago. Ken has been participating in a series of workshops jointly funded by the Canopy Project at Evergreen State College and the LTER Network Office to explore the usefulness of the Canopy DataBank and its applications to other ecosystems. It is hoped that JRN could provide the database design tools developed by the Canopy Project using their XML templateconcept to Jornada researchers. This would support reuse of database structures among research projects and provide initial statistical analysis and 3D visualization tools associated with these templates. John has represented JRN as a member of IM Exec.

Site Review
The Jornada Basin LTER had its fourth mid-term site review this August. The initial report at the end of the review was positive and we await the formal final report from the review team to better critique opportunities for improvement. New research intitiatives are being planned as a result of the site review process.