LTER Site Byte

LTER Site: North Temperate Lakes

Contributor: Barbara Benson (Aug 02, 2005)

Site Byte:

from Barbara Benson, Dave Balsiger, Jonathan Chipman, and Paul Hanson

Considerable work has been done in implementing the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) standard at NTL. The EML elements included in the NTL EML documents were expanded; particularly notable is the addition of taxonomic coverage. In April 2005 NTL LTER IM staff harvested EML documents for most of the NTL core data sets into the central metadata catalog, Metacat, for the LTER Network. These harvested EML documents are valid EML and describe identification, discovery, evaluation, access, and integration information. We are in the process of developing the metadata content further to be in full compliance with the EML Best Practices document developed by the LTER Information Managers.

The NTL LTER website underwent a major redesign during the past year. With the help of a professional graphics/web designer the website organization, appearance, navigation and usefulness were significantly enhanced. Website content was brought up to date.

Our development in the area of sensor networks has continued with the addition of another instrumented buoy at NTL and our leadership in the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), a grassroots network of limnologists, information technology experts, and engineers who are coordinating the construction of a scalable, persistent network of lake ecology observatories. In March 2005 an international workshop of researchers studying lakes and coral reefs was held in San Diego to explore building capacity using sensor networks and linking infrastructure to share data. This year personnel from NTL visited the instrumented buoy on Yuan Yang Lake in Taiwan to help upgrade the instrumentation and interact with Taiwanese scientists. Within the next year monitoring buoys on lakes in New Zealand, Israel and Finland should be added to the global network. Lakes in mainland China, South Korea, Japan and Australia may be added to GLEON in the future. NTL is collaborating through an NSF grant with computer scientists at UCSD, SUNY-Binghamton, and Indiana University to solve problems that limit the extensibility and scalability of data-generating sensor networks: (1) automating instrument management and the updating of data flows from sensors to publicly-accessible biological databases and (2) developing a suite of new algorithms and software for detection (real-time) of events based on data from sensors and databases, with applications to classification of signals as deriving from biological or physical events or to sensor failure, allowing rapid response.

Programmers at the Center for Limnology are developing software that provides sample and data management for the Center for Limnology Chemistry Lab (the program is called ChemLab). This project was initiated because the overload on the existing chemistry lab data management was leading to unacceptable sample processing backlogs. Tracking status of bottles and tests using pen and paper is inefficient and time consuming, and there was duplication of effort with the field crew in labeling and tracking bottle metadata. The ChemLab software stores bottle metadata, bottle/test status and analytical results in a database accessible to both the field crew and the chem lab technicians.

The spatial data catalog was improved and upgraded in several significant ways. The existing “static” version of the Spatial Data Catalog was redesigned as part of the overall website redesign. All the spatial data sets were converted to a common file format and map coordinate system, and uniform metadata were created. Several new data sets were added, most notably demographic spatial data. Finally, we developed a new, alternate method for managing the spatial data, which permits direct, dynamic access to the data via an Oracle database with an ArcSDE (Spatial Data Engine) interface. This represents an improvement over the “static” spatial data catalog by (a) facilitating access to data and metadata; (b) ensuring that users are working with the current version of all data; (c) enabling development of cross-site or network-level spatial data applications; and (d) facilitating development of web-based mapping applications. Ongoing spatial data management activities include work on such web-based mapping systems, the addition of new data sets to the catalog, and testing methods for converting the XML-format spatial metadata to valid EML.

Web design by Wade Sheldon, Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER