Improvements in Environmental Data Management, Access, and Communications at the Black Rock Forest Field Station

Black Rock Forest Consortium, Inc, Cornwall NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Black Rock Forest Consortium is being awarded a grant to improve its collection and management of environmental data and to enhance access to these data by users including both researchers and educational groups. A recent assessment of environmental data management and access at the Consortium's Black Rock Forest field station in southeastern New York State concluded that the research community would benefit from easier access to a broader selection of the environmental data collected in the forest than is currently available. A series of sensor stations distributed around the forest measure and record data on climate, soil conditions, streamflow and stream chemistry, energy balance and atmospheric chemistry. The sensor stations employ different systems for data collection and storage, and methods of access to these data also vary from direct web-based retrieval to individual processing of data requests by the field station's Data Manager. This grant will provide additional sensors, communications equipment, new computers and software to collect and automate the delivery of the majority of the station's environmental data streams, with appended metadata, to web sites hosted by Columbia University which will provide ready data access, visualization, and storage in a data repository. Over the last fifteen years the Black Rock Forest Consortium has responded to increasing numbers of requests for easier and more reliable access to research data from the Black Rock Forest. The Consortium has committed to provide open and unrestricted access to environmental data from the forest wherever possible. Nearly all of the twenty-one academic member institutions of the Consortium have user groups who need access to forest environmental data. The user groups of interest include scientists doing research directly in the Black Rock Forest as well as others, including researchers not affiliated with the Consortium, who seek remote access to environmental data from many sites to conduct regional, national, and global-scale studies. The new and openly accessible data streams will also create new opportunities for teaching, learning, and the integration of research with education. A diverse group of people interact with the field station including members of groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. The Consortium's Virtual Forest Initiative will employ several of the newly automated data streams to meet its goal of broadly enhancing environmental understanding through the use of digital technologies including custom-designed online tools available to all. For more information see the Black Rock Forest website at http://www.blackrockforest.org/.