Data

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Site Flash 2002

Peter McCartney, CAP Data Manager

We had two new hires this year. Radha Kunda (radha.kunda@asu.edu) replaced Matt Luck as our GIS technician. Rahdas background is in planning and comes with considerable programming expertise. Amy Sundermeir was hired to replace Steven Stevens as programmer on the BDI project. Amy worked mostly on developing XML tools and the tool for extracting metadata from online databases.

Intranet Developed a new intranet consisting of a series of forms for participants to update personnel, project, dataset, bibliography information and to upload documents and images to a shared archive. Related to this is a re-design of the LTER management database to make it more extensible for use by other related projects such as IGERT and the new Agricultural Transitions project

Projects Designed databases and entry applications for some new monitoring projects including atmospheric deposition, and an urban parks vegetation survey. Micromet stations were established at three new permanent plots and a set of upload scripts written to manage imports of these data into the SQL database.

Data Archives Began loading grid and image based data into Spatial Database Engine, including global topography data, DEM, raster graphics and aerial photography. New datasets include watershed analysis of Cave Creek region, and GIS layers of historic crop and livestock land use.

Ecology Explorers Completed an effort begun last summer to port the data entry and query features of the Ecology Explorers K-12 outreach website from Microsft ASP to JSP and to make the inteface more user friendly to K-12 users.

GREATER PHOENIX 2100

Radha Kunda helped develop GIS layers for an Urban Atlas of central Arizona that was produced as a product to promote the GP2100 project, a concept for delivering ecological data and research to the planning and decision-making community. The CES Informatics Lab will be developing and hosting an online-version of the Atlas, currently implemented as an ArcIMS application. Over the next year, this will be integrated with Xanthoria and metadata-driven data access to provide a more dynamic product.

BDI

• Tightened our collaboration with the Network Office and with the National Center for Analysis and Synthesis to produce a draft standard for EML 2.0.
• Developed Xanthoria, an XML query and retrieval system for distributed, heterogenous databases. Xanthoria is expected to be released as a beta this summer pending final revisions to the EML standard which it uses as a configuration file.
• Developed portions of Xylographa, a comprehensive tool for creating EML metadata. Components include Java tools for reverse engineering schema information from data sources, XSLT stylsheets for importing FGDC metadata into EML, and an interview-based editor based on Java and Cocoon, an XML management tool.
• Development of FloraExplora, a web application for browsing the Arizona Taxonomic Name database (ASU ITIS). FloraExlora allows users to filter the database by a library of predefined checklists and cross-query the collections catalogs and image libraries for Arizona flora.
• Implementation of the DeltaAccess database schema in MS SQL Server for vascularplants of the LTER study area and installtion of Navikey applet for online keying of a number of predefined checklists.

SERVICE ACTIVITIES

• Third and final year as NSF panelist for Postdoctoral fellowship awards in Bio-Informatics.
• McCartney's third and final! year as member of the LTER Information Management executive council.
• Hosted two workshops on Ecological Metadata Language for the LTER Network (January and June 19-21).
• McCartney elected to LTER Exec committee.

GRANTS

• Award to McCartney of subcontract to Network office on the ITER proposal "Enabling the Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge".
• Award to McCartney, Quay, Gries and Redman of ITR proposal "Networking Urban Ecological Models through Distributed Services".
• Submission by Landrum, McCartney and others of a collaborative proposal for data entry and image digitization of biological collections at several instutions in Arizona. This project builds on the technical work of the BDI.
  
  

Central Arizona - Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research
Global Institute of Sustainability | Arizona State University
PO Box 873211 | Tempe AZ 85287-3211
(480) 965-2975 | FAX (480) 965-8087

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