Elsevier

Ecological Informatics

Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 13-24
Ecological Informatics

Long term ecological research and information management

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2010.11.005Get rights and content

Abstract

The United States Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program has supported research in the ecological and environmental sciences for more than three decades. The Program has grown from six to 26 sites and has been the precursor to a worldwide network of International LTER sites. Extracting knowledge from the massive volume of disparate data collected across ecosystems and decades depends upon robust and evolving information management programs at each site as well as a growing, more centralized Network Information System that facilitates inter-site and network-wide data discovery, integration, and synthesis. This paper: (a) reviews the role of policies and governance in the evolution of LTER information management; (b) identifies the components of the human infrastructure that are employed to perform site- and network-level activities; (c) discusses information management functions that are supported at LTER sites grouped by data life cycle components—data acquisition, metadata annotation, incorporation into databases, data exploration/analysis/visualization, and data curation/preservation; and (d) presents the history of the evolution of network-level services within LTER and describes the overall architecture of the Network Information System. Finally, we review the factors that have driven the evolution of information management in LTER over the past three decades and postulate the factors that will guide further evolution of LTER information management during the upcoming decade.

Introduction

The United States Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program was initiated in 1980 through funding from the National Science Foundation for six initial sites. The program has since expanded to encompass a network of 26 research sites in ecosystems that span latitudinally from the Arctic tundra in Alaska to Antarctic dry valleys and longitudinally from the Moorea coral reef in French Polynesia to tropical rain forests in Puerto Rico (Fig. 1). The network of sites has focused on developing an understanding of ecological patterns and processes at an array of temporal (e.g., diurnal, decadal, century) and spatial (e.g., square meter plots, regional, continental) scales (e.g., Callahan, 1984, Franklin et al., 1990, Magnuson, 1990, Swanson and Sparks, 1990, Kratz et al., 1995, Hobbie et al., 2003).

To date, more than 17,000 peer-reviewed publications have been generated from LTER studies documenting patterns and control of primary productivity; spatial and temporal distributions of populations representing trophic structure; patterns and control of organic matter accumulation in surface layers and sediments; patterns of inorganic inputs and nutrient movement through soils, surface waters, and groundwater; and ecological responses to patterns and frequency of site disturbance (Michener and Waide, 2009). The success of the US LTER Program has led to the adoption of similar approaches in other countries and the establishment of the International LTER Network that includes 38 countries (http://www.ilternet.edu/) that are engaged in long-term, ecosystem-based ecological and socioeconomic research (Gosz et al., 2010).

Research at individual US LTER sites is on average conducted by 18 cooperating investigators and 20 graduate students, as well as by between 10 and 150 other scientists that use research infrastructure available at each site (Gosz et al., 2010). In addition to research, each site has an undergraduate and graduate education program and many offer programs for students and teachers at kindergarten through high school.

Information management is central to the success of LTER. Each site has developed a centralized architecture and staff that support the data life cycle from data and metadata acquisition through incorporation into databases, followed by data exploration, analysis and visualization, and finally ending with curation and preservation. Information management activities at LTER sites have evolved substantially since the 1980's when relatively small amounts of ecological data (e.g., kilobytes) were manually keypunched to today where much larger data volumes (e.g., 10s to 100s of gigabytes) are acquired via both manual and automated approaches (e.g., distributed sensor networks, satellites) on a weekly to annual basis.

The principal objective of this paper is to examine the current state of information management within the US LTER Network. In particular, we first discuss the role of policies and governance in the evolution of LTER information management. Second, we identify the components of the human infrastructure that are employed to perform site- and network-level activities. Third, we discuss many of the information management functions that are supported at LTER sites grouped by data life cycle components—data acquisition, metadata annotation, incorporation into databases, data exploration/analysis/visualization, and data curation/preservation. Next, we present a brief history of the evolution of network-level services within LTER and describe the overall architecture of the Network Information System which has been designed to facilitate inter-site and network-wide data discovery, integration, and synthesis. Finally, we review the factors that have driven the evolution of information management in LTER over the past three decades and postulate the factors that will guide further evolution of LTER information management during the upcoming decade.

Section snippets

LTER information policies and network governance

Extracting the maximum scientific value from long-term ecological data requires that data and its supporting metadata be preserved, and that data be available for use by researchers. Both of these requirements seem simple but in practice can be challenging, for both technical and social reasons. Preservation of data requires that metadata (also known as “documentation”, or “data about data”) be complete and accurate, and that data either be actively managed, or kept in good archival formats on

Human infrastructure for information management

Different types and numbers of personnel support information management activities at the individual LTER sites and the LTER Network Office, which coordinates network-wide activities.

LTER site information management for the data life cycle

The data life cycle can be described in many ways. Fig. 3 illustrates one view which encompasses two paths: a cycle that starts on the left and encompasses data collection or acquisition, quality assurance/quality control, metadata creation, integration (possibly via a database management system), preservation, analysis and visualization (including data exploration), and publication; and a second cycle that starts on the right and demonstrates re-use of archived data and metadata in conjunction

Network cyberinfrastructure for the data life cycle

The LTER Network cyberinfrastructure for the data life cycle has been evolving for the past 15 years, beginning with technology efforts like the ClimDB/HydroDB project (Henshaw et al., 2006) described earlier, the Data Table of Contents (“DToC”) (Brunt et al., 2002), which amassed LTER metadata records into a web-discoverable database, and the EcoTrends project (Laney and Peters, 2006) and through governance initiatives like the Network Information System Strategic Plan and the

Conclusion and future directions

Information management within the U.S. LTER network has evolved significantly since 1980 in response to needs of the scientific community as well as advances in information technologies. Some of the key drivers of change in LTER information management over the past three decades have included:

  • expansion of the research network to include new sites in different types of ecosystems;

  • broadening of the science to incorporating other domains such as the social, behavioral and economic sciences;

Acknowledgments

The work reported in this paper was supported through awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF 0621014, 0620482). William Michener would like to acknowledge additional financial support provided from NSF (#0753138 and #0830944) as well as technical support provided by Kayla Achen.

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