[CAnet - news] Cyber-infrastructure for fresh water lake ecology

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[Thanks to Peter Arzberger for this pointer -- BSA]

http://www.gleon.org/

The Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network is a grassroots network of
limnologists, information technology experts, and engineers who have a
common goal of building a scalable, persistent network of lake ecology
observatories.  Data from these observatories will allow us to better
understand key processes such as the effects of climate and landuse change
on lake function, the role of episodic events such as typhoons in resetting
lake dynamics, and carbon cycling within lakes.  The observatories will
consist of instrumented platforms on lakes around the world capable of
sensing key limnological variables and moving the data in near-real time to
web-accessible databases.  A common web portal will allow easy access to
researchers and the public.  A series of web services supported by this
portal will allow computation of metrics based on the high frequency data.
Such metrics would include estimates of rates of important processes such
gross primary production and respiration.


GLEON builds on a successful pilot project involving the North Temperate
Lakes LTER project, the human network of the NSF funded Pacific Rim
Application and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA), the University of
California-San Diego, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and a consortium
of institutions supporting the Taiwan Ecological Research Network (including
the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, the National Center for High
Performance Computing, and Academia Sinica).  Several lakes in Wisconsin and
Yuan Yang Lake in Taiwan have been instrumented and near-real time data from
the lakes are available at http://lakemetabolism.org.  In March 2005
scientists and information technology experts from ten countries met to
discuss extending the network.  Countries represented at this meeting
included: Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, South
Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the US.  Coral reef scientists interested
in using largely the same cyberinfrasture to build a parallel network for
their systems also participated in the meeting. The group is led by a
steering committee consisting of Peter Arzberger (University of
California-San Diego), Tim Kratz (University of Wisconsin), David Hamilton
(University of Waikato, New Zealand), and Fang-Pang Lin (National Center for
High Performance Computing, Taiwan). 

We envision a global network of hundreds of instrumented lakes, selected
strategically around the globe in disparate lakes, to understand at local,
regional, continental and global scales such issues as the direction and
rate of change of lakes; the factors controlling daily, seasonal, and
among-year variability of lake processes; and the reciprocal interactions
between human use of lakes and lake ecology.  By partnering with a diverse
international community of research organizations, we capitalize on a range
of scientific expertise while gaining a large gradient in lake physical,
chemical, and biological characteristics.  A global network of automated
lake observatories, each collecting and transferring data in near real time,
is within our grasp in the next decade, and will offer new opportunities in
scientific collaboration and understanding of lake processes.

One of GLEON's goals is to have the sensor platforms, cyberinfrastructure,
and information management components be compatible with the emerging design
for NEON.  This infrastructure will enable true international "team" science
and create educational opportunities for students around the world. Funding
for GLEON comes from many sources, including the Gordon and Betty Moore
Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and sources within the
individual participating countries.  Membership in the network is open to
all interested institutions.



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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.


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