LTER IMC community of practice: a learning environment

The SGS-LTER research site was established in 1980 by researchers at Colorado State University as part of a network of long-term research sites within the US LTER Network, supported by the National Science Foundation. Scientists within the Natural Resource Ecology Lab, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, and Biology Department at CSU, California State Fullerton, USDA Agricultural Research Service, University of Northern Colorado, and the University of Wyoming, among others, have contributed to our understanding of the structure and functions of the shortgrass steppe and other diverse ecosystems across the network while maintaining a common mission and sharing expertise, data and infrastructure.Includes bibliographical references.Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. A community of practice is not merely a group of people having the same job or a network of connections between people

Genomic Standards Consortium projects

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Standards in Genomic Sciences 9 (2014): 599-601, doi:10.4056/sigs.5559680.The Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) is an open-membership community working towards the development, implementation and harmonization of standards in the field of genomics. The mission of the GSC is to improve digital descriptions of genomes, metagenomes and gene marker sequences. The GSC started in late 2005 with the defined task of establishing what is now termed the “Minimum Information about any Sequence” (MIxS) standard [1,2]. As an outgrowth of the activities surrounding the creation and implementation of the MixS standard there are now 18 projects within the GSC [3]. These efforts cover an ever widening range of standardization activities. Given the growth of projects and to promote transparency, participation and adoption the GSC has developed a “GSC Project Description Template”. A complete set of GSC Project Descriptions and the template are available on the GSC website. The GSC has an open policy of participation and continues to welcome new efforts. Any projects that facilitate the standard descriptions and exchange of data are potential candidates for inclusion under the GSC umbrella. Areas that expand the scope of the GSC are encouraged. Through these collective activities we hope to help foster the growth of the ‘bioinformatics standards’ community. For more information on the GSC and its range of projects, please see http://gensc.org/

Framework for Building Collaborative Research Environment

Wide range of expertise and technologies are the key to solving some global problems. Semantic web technology can revolutionize the nature of how scientific knowledge is produced and shared. The semantic web is all about enabling machine-machine readability instead of a routine human-human interaction. Carefully structured data, as in machine readable data is the key to enabling these interactions. Drupal is an example of one such toolset that can render all the functionalities of Semantic Web technology right out of the box. Drupal’s content management system automatically stores the data in a structured format enabling it to be machine. In this article we will discuss how Drupal promotes collaboration in a research setting such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Long Term Ecological Research Center (LTER) and how it is effectively using the Semantic Web in achieving this

Pasta: A Network-level Architecture Design for Automating the Creation of Synthetic Products in the LTER Network

The LTER Network is now within its “Decade of Synthesis”. Providing Network-level synthetic data products, however, is still a challenge for researchers in the Network and its 26 research sites. The Network Information System group at the LTER Network Office has designed and prototyped an automated Network-level synthesis architecture called “Pasta”. The Pasta architecture extends the data warehouse notion of extraction and loading of external data into a centralized data store by building on key technology already in use at the LTER Network – primarily the Ecological Metadata Language and the Metacat database. Once loaded, the source or site data are transformed from the local site schema and into a global schema, and a new metadata document cast as EML is generated and inserted back into the Metacat database. Finally, the data that conforms to the global schema, called “synthetic ” data, are exposed to the community through a number of different interfaces, including HTML and web services. This architecture is currently being developed through a “proof-of-concept ” approach for the “Trends ” project, and has recently been demonstrated at the LTER 2006 All Scientists Meeting in Estes Park, Colorado

Impact of diurnal freeze-thaw cycles on the soil nematode Scottnema lindsayae in Taylor Valley, Antarctica

Global climate change scenarios predict not only higher temperatures, but also increased climatic variability. In cold regions, these changes may bring about a shift in the frequency of soil freeze-thaw cycles (FTCs), which represent a significant physiological challenge, especially for small, poikilothermic animals with limited mobility. To assess the impact of FTCs on cold-adapted soil biota, we evaluated freeze-thaw dynamics (i.e., 0 A degrees C crossings) and demographics of the dominant nematode Scottnema lindsayae (proportion of adults, population size) over 20 years in soils at two locations in Taylor Valley, Antarctica. Based on hourly soil temperature data, we demonstrate that FTCs are a frequent feature in Taylor Valley, but with high inter-annual and spatial variability. Valley topography and soil moisture were found to impact FTC frequency, suggesting that basins within Taylor Valley have different susceptibilities to environmental variability. Increased FTC frequency in 1999-2001 coincided with a shift in S. lindsayae populations, with fewer juveniles reaching maturity. In the years following decreased adult proportions, overall S. lindsayae numbers were reduced, implying a strong negative effect of FTCs on in situ recruitment. Our results suggest that increased FTC frequency in the Dry Valleys slows S. lindsayae development, reducing reproductive success, and may take years to impact population size, which demonstrates the importance of long-term research to accurately predict the consequences of climate change on soil biota and biogeochemical cycling in the cold regions