Biodiversity and Ecosystem Informatics - BDEI - Spatial Data Infrastructure for Ecological Research (Planning Grant)

Evergreen State College, Olympia WA

Investigators

Abstract

EIA-0131952 Cushing, Judith Evergreen State College BDEI: Spatial Data Infrastructure for Ecological Research (Planning Grant) Summary The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Informatics Research Agenda (http://bio.gsfc.nasa.gov) notes the current inability to compare data across spatial scales as a critical problem: "Biological data from different sources are frequently collected and presented in different scales and resolutions resulting in a loss of detail when multiple data sets are required for data synthesis and analysis". This grant brings together a team of ecologists and computer scientists to plan a proposal for a "Spatial Data Infrastructure for Ecological Sciences." The proposed infrastructure would allow a scientist to define a data set by putting together the proper "spatial." building blocks -- building blocks represented in conceptually familiar, domain-specific terms. Data sets thus constructed (or recast) would be amenable to the automatic integration of spatial locations and measurements with automatic spatial data transformations. This would allow spatial analysis of individual field data sets and the linking together at same and different spatial scales data sets defined within the spatial infrastructure. We aim to include productivity enhancing research tools such as field data gathering devices and data validation and analysis, and to automatically tag field data with metadata early in the research cycle. We thus also contribute to the synthesis of metadata and data.