LTER Site Byte
LTER Site: Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR)
Contributor: John Porter (Aug 01, 2007)
Site Byte:
1. Annual Site Byte
Another busy year at the Virginia Coast Reserve LTER project! We're greatly enjoying our new home at the Anheuser-Busch Coastal Research Center. Its modern, climate-controlled laboratory and dormitory facilities are a giant improvement over the renovated farm house it replaced. However, based on how busy it's been this summer, we may need to expand it soon!
On the IM-front this has been a year for consolidating some activities and improving user interfaces for data access. In particular, we've improved our local data catalog by changing a long list into a matrix format that can be sorted by a variety of criteria, including core area and popularity. We also did some major work on our database of locations (for datasets, species observations etc.), dealing with a large number of locations that were named and described, but had no coordinates. To avoid such problems in the future a new interface for identifying locations was developed. It uses the Google Maps API v.2 (following testing to make sure that the georeferencing was sufficiently accurate in our area) so that a user can use the standard Google Maps controls to zoom and pan the map, then click on a location to record its coordinates into our location data table. Coupled with that new facility is an interactive map (again using the Google API) that plots all locations for VCR/LTER datasets. Clicking on a location pulls up a list of all the datasets associated with that location. Currently the system only supports points and bounding boxes, but we look forward to adding polygon capabilities in the future.
We have also worked on enhancing data systems for important datasets. Traditionally these have been handled using user-designed spreadsheets. However, in some cases these were inconsistent in format and highly variable in the degree of quality control and assurance. For our water quality dataset we have developed an operational system that incorporates spreadsheet forms (including both data and “flags”), a PERL ingestion program that resolves relational issues that the spreadsheet handles poorly, a MySQL database, R-scripts that conduct standard QA analyses, and data editing capabilities using phpMyAdmin and an ODBC-linked Access database. A web page provides a central location for uploading spreadsheets, running QA analyses and for data editing. We plan to use this system as a prototype for additional types of data in the near future.
We also have experimented with the Drupal content-management system. Although, PostNuke systems are used for all of our major web pages, Drupal is being used for new graduate student and project-specific web pages that depend heavily on relatively unstructured user input, as the Drupal tools are somewhat simpler and easy to use for the naive user, albeit perhaps less powerful than the PostNuke tools for the expert user.
We are also looking at options for the future. Currently our main systems are hosted by a powerful, but aging Sun Blade 2000 server. However, as more software has become available in the Linux environment, we see that as an option for our future. We have therefore set up a “developmental” Linux server on a functional, but obsolete, PC, and are using it to test software etc.
Our wireless network on the shore continues to expand. We had to do a major rebuild on one of the nodes when it took a direct lighting strike so intense that most connections were welded together. However, that gave us a chance to experiment with improved power systems that now permit 24/7 operation. We are adding an extensive network of ground-water wells to the network on Hog Island and developing plans for extending the network to other islands. We have also collaborated with the University of Virginia's Engineering School to deploy a mote-based network of light sensors (LUSTER – Light Under Shrub Thickets Ecological Research).
We have continued our strong interactions with the Taiwan Ecological Research Network (TERN). TERN researchers Chi-Wen Hsaio and Chau-Chin Lin visited during the winter of 2006 and spring of 2007, respectively. We worked with them on developing web-based systems that ingest EML documents and the associated data and produce quality assurance analyses. We also participated, along with Don Henshaw from AND and Kristin Vanderbilt from SEV in a workshop in Shanping Taiwan that helped train East Asia Pacific (EAP) ILTER researchers in the use of Kepler and other tools that exploit EML.
Along with Chau-Chin Lin, John Porter made an invited presentation to the Coastal Environmental Sensing Networks workshop at the University of Massachusetts, Boston in April 2007. We also took the opportunity to visit Emory Boose at HFR during the trip. John Porter also remains a member of the Oak-Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center User Working Group.
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2. Planned IM Projects
1) Expand use of relational databases in day-to-day data input and management and improve automated QA/QC checking
2) Explore how to best capture polygon-based location data
3) Continue development of EML-based tools, ideally as web services
4) Link VCR Personnel Database with LNO Personnel database, as API becomes available
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