Palmer Station LTER SiteFlash - August 2004 - Karen Baker


PALMER INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (IM) supported the annual January cruise
and the seasonal October to March field work at Palmer Station, Antarctica.  
The second year of the 3rd Palmer LTER proposal cycle initiated technology 
review process and infrastructure redesign in order to support transitions 
to new approaches to networking as well as to data and metadata structures.

LTER NETWORK ACTIVITY included participation in LTER Information Manger
Committee activities and annual meeting (Aug04), a web services workshop 
(Jan04) at SDSC, and an LTER IM Executive Committee Meeting (Jan04) in San 
Diego. Contributions were made and support provided for the semi-annual 
Databits Newsletters. Investigations of collaborative tools as part of a web 
site upgrade are underway and synergize with ongoing efforts at the LTER Network
Office, at other LTER sites, and at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO).

SITE DATA MANAGEMENT activities included annual updates to the Palmer 
LTER data repository, document archives, and to the site bibliography. 
In preparing for redesign of the Palmer LTER data system, a workshop (Dec03)
on Data Management Exchange provided input on the Joint Global Ocean Flux 
Studies (JGOFS) Data Management System, recognized as one of the oceanographic 
community standards. Installation occurred this year at the request of the 
Palmer scientific members familiar with its user interface. Additional 
analysis packages as well as community exchange protocols are also being 
investigated as part of efforts to collaborate with community partners.
METADATA STATUS: Palmer LTER data formats and metadata tags are being updated 
and a set of XML dictionaries developed and populated as the set of local SIO, 
JGOFS, and LTER Ecological Metadata Language requirements inform development 
of new procedures for data quality control and normalization. 

COMPUTATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE for the Palmer LTER within the Institute 
for Computational Earth System Science (ICESS) at UCSB has continued without 
major change except for upgraded security vigilance.  Partnership with 
the Integrative Oceanographic Division at SIO has added support for 
Mac platforms and Linux as well as renewed focus on open source software 
(Apache, MySQL and Php). Installation this year of a new storage and web 
server system provides a contemporary foundation from which to build 
infrastructure and collaboration with the new California Current Ecosystem 
LTER (CCE) site located at SIO.

Ongoing Palmer LTER IM INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH, in collaboration with 
Science & Technology Studies, bridges environmental, information, and 
social sciences.  In addition, collaboration with education/outreach endeavors 
is in the midst of a two year plan to design and prototype a conceptual 
framework for site outreach supported by information management.  This work 
has been presented to the LTER community via talks and written communications. 
Papers were presented at the Hawaii International Conference on System Science 
(Jan04) and the Participatory Design Conference (Aug04) and a poster presented 
at the LTER All Scientists Meeting.