James W. Brunt

Evolution of Collaboration within the US Long Term Ecological Research Network

The US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program began in 1980 with the mission of addressing long-term ecological phenomena through research at individual sites, as well as comparative and synthetic activities among sites. We applied network science measures to assess how the LTER program has achieved its mission using intersite publications as the measure of collaboration. As it grew, the LTER program evolved from (a) a collection of independent sites (1981–1984) to (b) multiple ephemerally connected groupings with a gradual increase in collaboration (1985 to about 1998) to (c) a largely collaborative, densely connected network (from approximately 1999 on). Some sites demonstrated “preferential attachment” by contributing more to the evolution of network cohesion than others. Collaborative efforts of LTER scientists included cross-site measurements and comparions, information technology transfer, documentation of methodologies, and synthesis of ecological concepts. Network science provides insights that not only document the evolution of research networks but also may be prescriptive of mechanisms to enhance this evolution.

Defining linkages between the GSC and NSF's LTER program: How the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) relates to GCDML and other outcomes

The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) invited a representative of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) to its fifth workshop to present the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) metadata standard and its relationship to the Minimum Information about a Genome/Metagenome Sequence (MIGS/MIMS) and its implementation, the Genomic Contextual Data Markup Language (GCDML). The LTER is one of the top National Science Foundation (NSF) programs in biology since 1980, representing diverse ecosystems and creating long-term, interdisciplinary research, synthesis of information, and theory. The adoption of EML as the LTER network standard has been key to build network synthesis architectures based on high-quality standardized metadata. EML is the NSF-recognized metadata standard for LTER, and EML is a criteria used to review the LTER program progress. At the workshop, a potential crosswalk between the GCDML and EML was explored. Also, collaboration between the LTER and GSC developers was proposed to join efforts toward a common metadata cataloging designers tool. The community adoption success of a metadata standard depends, among other factors, on the tools and trainings developed to use the standard. LTERs experience in embracing EML may help GSC to achieve similar success. A possible collaboration between LTER and GSC to provide training opportunities for GCDML and the associated tools is being explored. Finally, LTER is investigating EML enhancements to better accommodate genomics data, possibly integrating the GCDML schema into EML. All these action items have been accepted by the LTER contingent, and further collaboration between the GSC and LTER is expected.

The contribution and reuse of LTER data in the Provenance Aware Synthesis Tracking Architecture (PASTA) data repository

Abstract Sites in the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network have now contributed greater than 5000 data packages into the LTER Network Information System (NIS). This corpus of data and metadata allows us to analyze characteristics of data from the LTER program, including temporal coverage, data format, rate of submission, volume of data, and ecological characteristics of the data (e.g., ecosystems, processes, organisms). In addition, data/metadata congruence checks included in the Provenance Aware Synthesis Tracking Architecture (PASTA) underlying the NIS allow us to examine the quality of metadata submitted. Initial records of data use and citation provide the means to evaluate the efficacy of this repository in disseminating data throughout a broader community – 89 citations of data packages found in 52 articles have been documented to date.

Research data management in ecology: a practical approach for long-term projects

Effective management of ecological research data can insure the security and accessibility of data that cannot be collected again under the same conditions and plays a key role in every aspect of the research project from experimental design to publication. Commercial relational database management software, developed primarily for business applications, does not provide an adequate solution for long-term scientific data management. An archive file format provides the standard around which a data file management system is implemented. The system works within the parameters of existing components of the operating system software. Data filters and data engines are used to communicate data to and from applications. This paper documents this working approach to research data management in use on the Sevilleta LTER project.<<ETX>>