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LTER Site Byte
LTER Site: Central Arizona - Phoenix
Contributor: Corinna Gries (Sep 12, 2006)
Site Byte:
During the last year we improved publication search and download functionality on the CAP website. Results from a simple or advanced search can be marked and exported as plain text, EML or EndNote export format. The EndNote export format is also used for bulk upload to the LNO publications database. About 40 protocols used by CAP have been converted to EML format and added to the EML database in eXist an open source xml database system.
As a major update to data management at CAP we have experimented with and implemented online data entry applications written in php and accessing data in MySQL. This represents a move away from SQLServer and ACCESS front end applications. A basic template was developed in php to rapidly add new entry applications. Currently three data entry applications are being used successfully and a fourth is ready.
Thanks to the addition of a student programmer we have made major progress with our intranet. Bugs have been worked out and this year’s annual report submission went smoothly. Online equipment and vehicle reservations have been added and the very successful concept of an informal working group was expanded. Working groups allow people to post and download documents, have a threaded discussion and collaboratively edit text documents. After several less successful experiments with commercial and open source software packages we have integrated this functionality into the intranet and at this point the document posting and downloading has been very well accepted by the researchers.
A former graduate student, Ed Gilbert, has returned to work with us full time as web programmer. A plant taxonomist by training, he is mainly interested in biodiversity informatics and during his former tenure has been instrumental in establishing the biodiversity section of the Southwest Environmental Information Network (http://seinet.asu.edu ). Arizona’s large biodiversity collections can all be searched simultaneously, species distributions mapped and dynamic checklist created for any region based on collection records. In his spare time he is working on an application that allows interested people to contribute remotely to a central character database and online key for Arizona. His first duty will be the improvement of our data downloading functionality.
The Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) is participating in the state funded Arizona Water Institute, a consortium of Arizona’s three universities focused on water sustainability through research, technical assistance, education and technology. The GIOS datalab staff is involved in building the Arizona Hydrologic Information system (http://www.azwaterinstitute.org/ahis/ ) in collaboration with the other universities, local stakeholders and CUAHSI (http://www.cuahsi.org/ ).
GIOS has recently added the School of Sustainability (http://sos.asu.edu ), offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the area of sustainability research.
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