Craig Tweedie

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Craig Tweedie Department of Biology and the
Environmental Science and Engineering Program,
ctweedie_at_utep.edu Office 413 Biology
Building Ph office 915 747 8448 Ph Cell 915 490
7302
Making a Database of Automatic Weather Station
Data Available Online.
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Rationale Underpinning Class Project

• Global change, which includes climate change, has
  become recognized as amongst the greatest
  challenges facing human kind.
• Understanding the future state of the Earth
  System and how humans will need to adapt has
  become an urgent priority in the ecological and
  environmental sciences.
• Bigger picture questions in the environmental
  sciences need to be answered.
• We therefore need to improve
• Local to international environmental monitoring
  using automated data collection techniques and
  technologies.
• Data and information coordination and integration
  between disciplines and collaborating entities.
• Computer models and various synthesis efforts,
  which are becoming increasingly complicated,
  interdisciplinary and data and information
  hungry.
• These are driving a paradigm shift in the
  environmental sciences.

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The Ongoing Paradigm Shift in Environmental
Science

• Environmental Science is becoming data driven.
  researchers are increasingly relying on other
  peoples measurements in their analyses TRUST.
• Standardized sensors and sensor platforms are
  increasingly recognized for their potential to
  increase the integration potential of data sets
  collected by different research teams.
• There is significant pressure to adopt more and
  more advanced technologies and collect more data
  from the same locations and at higher
  frequencies.
• Increasing challenges for researchers to deal
  with large data streams/ data sets
  OPTIMIZATION.

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Static Instrument Towers
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• Mobile Instrument Platforms
• Measure optical reflectance
• Validate satellite platforms
• New science opportunities for UTEP
• Build on intra-UTEP collaborations
• Huge data volumes
• Multiple sensors
• Strong need for data integration
• Remotely operated
• Wireless communications
• Real /near real time data

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
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Satellite Level 10 KM
Aircraft Level 1 KM
Ecosystem Scaling
Tower-Tram Level 300 meter
Plot Level 1 meter
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Changes in Hydrology
Shrinkage of Ponds near Council, Alaska on the
Seward Peninsula (1950 - 2000) 22 of 24
ponds (Hinzman et al., in review)
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Customized web-based mapping and information
portals
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Cyber tools for optimizing spatial and temporal
sensor arrays and other observation systems
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• LTER

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• US LTER
• Sites

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Challenge in this Class

• Develop a web-based system for viewing, querying,
  and downloading and uploading data from 6
  automatic weather stations (AWS) that will be
  situated in different locations at UTEPs Indio
  Mountains Research Station http//research.utep.ed
  u/Default.aspx?aliasresearch.utep.edu/indio
• Weather stations will include sensors for wind
  speed, air temperature, relative humidity,
  atmospheric pressure, soil temperature,
  precipitation and condition of the data logger
  (e.g. battery voltage).
• More sensors may be added in the future.
• Researchers will use off the shelf software to
  program the weather stations and download data
  (ASCII) to a laptop.
• Data will be in appropriate units and format.

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Your Challenge

• Researchers will then load data to a database
  that you will design we are using Postgre SQL
  (www.postgre.sql) mostly but MS Access is also
  used in my lab.
• Data will need to be screened for quality range
  limits, error over a given time period etc. These
  will be given to you by me at a later point in
  time.
• Through a web-enabled tool developed off the
  Systems Ecology Lab (SEL) website
  (www.sel.utep.edu), other users will be able to
  view, query and download the AWS data.
• The SEL website has been in PLONE www.plone.org,
  an open source content management system built on
  Zope application server.

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Your Challenge contd

• Uploading of data will need to be simple for
  ecologists to do and we seek your input on how
  this may be achieved.
• Viewing will require graphs of sensor/query
  output from one or more sensors and AWSs to be
  viewed over a select time period.
• Querying will require various parameters to be
  calculated e.g. heat sums, drought indices etc.
  These will be provided at a later point in time
• Downloading will require
• Saving graphs as jpgs
• Downloading data or queries to ASCII format files

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Users of the Data

• Users will include researchers using IMRS and
  other researchers interested in AWS data from the
  Chihuahuan Desert.
• AWS data is baseline data for ecological/environme
  ntal science research. Data will be used in
  applications such as
• Modeling hydrological runoff from the IMRS
  landscape
• Climate studies
• Habitat modeling for plant species
• Plant and animal ecology and physiological
  studies
• Education classes
• Outreach

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Where to from here?

• AWSs will be built and situated in my lab after
  Wednesday 10th Sept.
• You are welcome to come to lab 409 in the Biology
  Building and use the AWSs program to collect
  data, download etc.
• Field deployment will start late this month or
  sometime next month is there interest in
  helping us situate them in the field?
• The first field data are expected by November
  2008.
• We need to know your desired use of our servers,
  requirements for any sys admin that may be
  required and or alteration to our websites.

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Whats with the warm water Is this natural or
was that you?
Good question We could swim in circles thinking
about it or we could get someone to help figure
it out with us
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Lets take a look at the AWS in more detail.