Ghosts in the data: false detections in VEMCO pulse position modulation acoustic telemetry monitoring equipment

Background: False-positive data (better known as "false detections") in VEMCO VR2 acoustic telemetry monitoring studies that use pulse position modulation coding can cause biased or erroneous outcomes in data analysis. To understand the occurrence of false detections in acoustic monitoring data sets, the results of a range test experiment using eight acoustic receivers and 12 transmitters were examined. Results: One hundred and fifty one tag ID codes were recorded, 137 of which were identified as likely from false detections, 12 were from test tags, and two were from tagged sharks. False detections accounted for < 0.05 % of detections (918) in the experiment. False detection tag ID codes were not randomly distributed amongst the available codes, being more likely to occur at IDs close to tags used in the experiment. Receivers located near the bottom recorded the most false detections and tag ID codes from false detections. Receivers at the same depth did not differ significantly in the mean number of daily false detections. The daily number of false detections recorded by a receiver did not conform to a random pattern, and was not strongly correlated with daily receiver performance. Conclusions: In an era of increasing data sharing and public storage of scientific data, the occurrence of false detections is of significant concern and the results of this study demonstrate that while rare they do occur and can be identified and accounted for in analyses

Data Descriptor: Australia’s continental-scale acoustic tracking database and its automated quality control process

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ applies to the metadata files made available in this article.Our ability to predict species responses to environmental changes relies on accurate records of animal movement patterns. Continental-scale acoustic telemetry networks are increasingly being established worldwide, producing large volumes of information-rich geospatial data. During the last decade, the Integrated Marine Observing System’s Animal Tracking Facility (IMOS ATF) established a permanent array of acoustic receivers around Australia. Simultaneously, IMOS developed a centralised national database to foster collaborative research across the user community and quantify individual behaviour across a broad range of taxa. Here we present the database and quality control procedures developed to collate 49.6 million valid detections from 1891 receiving stations. This dataset consists of detections for 3,777 tags deployed on 117 marine species, with distances travelled ranging from a few to thousands of kilometres. Connectivity between regions was only made possible by the joint contribution of IMOS infrastructure and researcher-funded receivers. This dataset constitutes a valuable resource facilitating meta-analysis of animal movement, distributions, and habitat use, and is important for relating species distribution shifts with environmental covariates

A database of marine phytoplankton abundance, biomass and species composition in Australian waters

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the present. Many of these are small datasets collected for local questions, but combined they provide over 170 years of data on phytoplankton communities in Australian waters. Units and taxonomy have been standardised, obviously erroneous data removed, and all metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network (http://portal.aodn.org.au/) allowing public access. The Australian Phytoplankton Database will be invaluable for global change studies, as it allows analysis of ecological indicators of climate change and eutrophication (e.g., changes in distribution; diatom:dinoflagellate ratios). In addition, the standardised conversion of abundance records to biomass provides modellers with quantifiable data to initialise and validate ecosystem models of lower marine trophic levels

Publishing Australian Marine Data to OBIS: Twenty Years of Lessons Learnt

In 2003, the Australian Antarctic Data Centre published the first Australian dataset of seabirds from the Southern Ocean to OBIS (Ocean Biodiversity Information System) via DiGIR (Distributed Generic Information Retrieval). The dataset initially had 17 fields with an emphasis on counts of individuals. Standards evolved and with the development of the IPT (Integrated Publishing Toolkit) by GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) around 2008, large datasets could be published. OBIS subsequently adopted the IPT as the preferred publishing tool for providers to use. In 2016, the Darwin Core Event core with the  OBIS Extended Measurements and Facts extension was released (De Pooter et al. 2017), meaning that richer and more comprehensive datasets could be published via the IPT. It is only recently that the biological aggregators (e.g.,  OBIS, GBIF) are looking at enhancing functionality to report this data.The Australian OBIS Node (OBIS-AU), hosted by CSIRO NCMI (the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation National Collections and Marine Infrastructure Business Unit) now manages an Australian region marine biodiversity IPT with 30 million records from over 450 datasets. In the last 12 months, using the GBIF DNA Derived Data Extention, the OBIS-AU Node has published extensive eDNA datasets to OBIS with sequences and DNA related metadata.OBIS-AU has developed tools and procedures to ensure that data is of the best possible quality before it is published. Issues covered include preventing the duplication of data, preserving context, enhancing data once published with improvements in publication schemas, matching taxa, and identification of temporal or spatial errors

Brutalist Building Retrofit

The objective of this project was to design a rooftop art gallery with special considerations for large sculptures for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Fine Arts Center (FAC). The FAC is an exposed concrete, Brutalist building completed in 1973 that was designed by Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates. It is composed of a series of interconnected buildings. We conducted a visual inspection of the FAC by visiting the site of interest, performed a structural analysis for two of the interconnected buildings, and designed a rooftop art gallery for Building B. While designing the art gallery, we analyzed the structure under the new loads, designed a new waterproofing roof system, and incorporated new means of egress and an elevator that would allow access to the roof

Recharging the Future: Closing the Loop on the Lithium-ion Batery Lifecycle

Hybrid/Electric Vehicles (EV/HEVs) will represent 7% of the global vehicle market by 2050. Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, half the car’s cost, are safe while in use but hazardous when they enter traditional waste streams. By developing a closed loop recycling process, subsidies reduce consumer battery cost by 11%, and an energy storing electrical grid balances energy supply/demand, increases useful battery life by 100%, and increases grid efficiency. Green Battery Recycling technology recycles 90% of material value into new raw materials. Our closed loop process manages valuable hazardous materials responsibly, thereby decreasing cost, improving national security, and promoting environmental health.1, 6, 1

Unbuilt WPI

Unbuilt WPI is an IQP devoted to exploring the WPI that could have been. The display portion of the project, inspired by recent 150th celebrations, is part of a visual timeline exhibit located around campus.  Each display presents proposed designs for WPI buildings ultimately constructed differently or, in some cases, not at all. WPI's Curation, Preservation, and Archives department provided the images and information for most of the displays. A research paper compliments these displays, delving further into the reasonings behind each proposed building(s) while also highlighting the architectural style and historical context of each proposal

Algorithms to estimate Antarctic sea ice algal biomass from under-ice irradiance spectra at regional scales

The presence of algal pigments in sea ice alters under-ice irradiance spectra, and the relationship between these variables can be used as a non-invasive means for estimating ice- associated algal biomass on ecologically relevant spatial and temporal scales. While the influence of snow cover and ice algal biomass on spectra transmitted through the snow-ice matrix has been examined for the Arctic, it has not been tested for Antarctic sea ice at regional scales. We used paired measurements of sea ice core chla concentrations and hyperspectral-transmitted under-ice irradiances from 59 sites sampled off East Antarctica and in the Weddell Sea to develop algorithms for estimating algal biomass in Antarctic pack ice. We compared 4 approaches that have been used in various bio-optical studies for marine systems: normalised difference indices, ratios of spectral irradiance, scaled band area and empirical orthogonal functions. The percentage of vari- ance explained by these models ranged from 38 to 79%, with the best-performing approach being normalised difference indices. Given the low concentrations of integrated chl a observed in our study compared with previous studies, our statistical models performed surprisingly well in explaining variability in these concentrations. Our findings provide a basis for future work to develop methods for non-invasive time series measurements and medium- to large-scale spatial mapping of Antarctic ice algal biomass using instrumented underwater vehicles

An Australian Model of Cooperative Data Publishing to OBIS and GBIF

The Australian Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) hosts both the Australian Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) nodes within the National Collections and Marine Infrastructure (NCMI) business unit. OBIS-AU is led by the NCMI Information and Data Centre and publishes marine biodiversity data in the Darwin Core (DwC) standard via an Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), with over 450 marine datasets at present. The Australian GBIF node is hosted by a separate team at the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), a national-scale biodiversity analytical and knowledge delivery portal. The ALA aggregates and publishes over 800 terrestrial and marine datasets from a wide variety of research institutes, museums and collections, governments and citizen science agencies, including OBIS-AU. Many OBIS-AU published datasets are harvested and republished by ALA and vice-versa.OBIS-AU identifies, performs Quality Control and formats marine biodiversity and observation data, then publishes directly to the OBIS international data repository and portal, using GBIF IPT technology. The ALA data processing pipeline harvests, aggregates and enhances datasets from many sources with authoritative taxonomic and spatial reference data before passing the data on to GBIF. OBIS-AU and ALA are working together to ensure that the publication pathways for any datasets managed by both (with potential for duplication of records and incomplete metadata harvests) are rationalised and that a single collaborative workflow across both units is followed for publication to GBIF. Recently, the data management groups have established an agreement to cooperatively publish marine data and eDNA data. OBIS-AU have commenced publishing datasets directly to GBIF with ALA endorsement.We present the convergent evolution of OBIS and GBIF data publishing in Australia, adaptive data workflows to maintain data and metadata integrity, challenges encountered, how domain expertise ensures data quality and the benefits of sharing data skills and code, especially in publishing eDNA data types in DwC (using the DNA-derived data extension) and exploring the new CamTrap Data Package using Frictionless data. We also present the work that both data groups are doing toward adopting the GBIF new Unified Data model for publishing data. This Australian case study demonstrates the strengths of collaborative data publishing and offers a model that minimises replication of data in global aggregators through the development of regional integrated data publishing pipelines