Award Abstract #0236154
A Proposal for the Network Office of the U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network

NSF Org:	DEB Division of Environmental Biology
Initial Amendment Date:	March 13, 2003
Latest Amendment Date:	September 17, 2008
Award Number:	0236154
Award Instrument:	Cooperative Agreement
Program Manager:	Henry L. Gholz DEB Division of Environmental Biology BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences
Start Date:	March 1, 2003
Expires:	February 28, 2009 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$10200614
Investigator(s):	Robert Waide rwaide@lternet.edu (Principal Investigator) John Vande Castle (Co-Principal Investigator) James Brunt (Co-Principal Investigator) William Michener (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	University of New Mexico 1700 Lomas Blvd. NE ALBUQUERQUE, NM 87131 505/277-9512
NSF Program(s):	ECOSYSTEM SCIENCE CLUSTER, EAPSI, INTERNATIONAL PLAN & WORKSHOPS, WESTERN EUROPE PROGRAM, CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE PROGR, EAST ASIA AND PACIFIC PROGRAM, AMERICAS PROGRAM, AFRICA, NEAR EAST, & SO ASIA, ENVIR SOCIAL & BEHAVIOR SCIENC, ANTARCTIC ORGANISMS & ECOSYST, BIOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY, BE: NON-ANNOUNCEMENT RESEARCH, LONG TERM ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH, ECOSYSTEM STUDIES, ADVANCES IN BIO INFORMATICS, ECOLOGICAL BIOLOGY CLUSTER
Field Application(s):	0510602 Ecosystem Dynamics
Program Reference Code(s):	SMET,EGCH,9278,9251,9178,9177,9169,9150,5980,5979,5978,5977,5976,5209,5111,4444,1689,1650,1195,1165
Program Element Code(s):	7381,7316,7299,5980,5979,5978,5977,5976,5209,5111,1650,1629,1195,1181,1165,1128

ABSTRACT

The LTER Network Office (NET) was transferred to the University of New Mexico in 1997. NET objectives have been to provide basic services to LTER, facilitate communication among LTER sites and between LTER and the broader environmental sciences community, promote new technologies, and provide leadership in data and information management. Since NET moved to Albuquerque, LTER has grown from 18 to 24 sites and the number of associated scientists has expanded from 894 to more than 1500. This proposal represents a request to renew the LTER Network Office for the next six years. Five essential NET Service functions that are central to the operation of LTER would be continued and enhanced to better meet community needs. Funding is also requested to expand four other focal areas that are key to broadening the impact of LTER on science and society.

The five essential NET functions supported through this project include: (1) service to the LTER community (e.g., proposal preparation, accounting, meeting coordination); (2) computational and communication infrastructure (e.g., e-mail, database backups, web access); (3) information management and methods development (e.g., data and metadata standardization, curation and expansion of LTER Network databases); (4) network development, community outreach and training (e.g., coordination of the Partnership for Biodiversity Informatics, OBFS training and database development); and (5) publications and public outreach (e.g., newsletters, web site, synthesis volumes). Two expanded and related NET functions are essential to enabling LTER to reach new levels of understanding of long-term ecological patterns and processes: (6) Synthesis (e.g., integration and synthesis via working groups, creation of value-added databases) and (7) Information System Design and Development (e.g., distributed data networking, data

integration tools). Funding is also requested to continue and broaden the impacts that LTER has on the international scientific community and environmental education in the United States via: (8) International LTER (e.g., coordination of ILTER meetings, ILTER publications, informatics training) and (9) Education (e.g., facilitation of site-based education programs, workshops). A tenth activity, the implementation of a 21 st Century Strategic Plan for the LTER Network, would be completed within the first two years of the NET renewal.

During the next six years, the LTER Network office will continue to facilitate knowledge advances and understanding within ecology by (1) promoting LTER communication among sites and throughout the ecological sciences and (2) disseminating data, information, and knowledge via the web, synthesis and publications, training, and community and public outreach. New efforts and resources devoted to synthesis and information system development, international LTER, and education will significantly broaden the impact of LTER science by enabling us to better provide integrated and synthetic data and information to the broader scientific community, students, and policy-makers. In addition, we will greatly increase our efforts to expand LTER into a global scientific enterprise via ILTER and expand the reach of LTER education beyond

the schoolyard (i.e., from K-12 to policy-makers to the general public). We will further expand our efforts to reach underserved groups, incorporating an enhanced focus on Chicanos and Native Americans.

The revised SOW comprises the ten following sections, arranged to reflect the organization of DEB-0236154. A revised budget and budget justification accompany this document. Strategic planning documents will be submitted separately. Each section of the SOW details activities which will and will not take place under the revised budget. The requested budget is tied to specific activities, which in turn are linked to the personnel time needed to complete the activity. The revised SOW specifically identifies

activities that will benefit the LTER Network, the International LTER Network, the general scientific community, the education community, the University of New Mexico (UNM), or NSF.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Andelman, S.J., C.M. Bowles, M.R. Willig, and R.B. Waide.  "Disentangling biocomplexity through a Distributed Knowledge Network.,"  BioScience,  v.54,  2004,  p. 240.

Birkland, T.A., R.J. Burby, D. Conrad, H. Cortner and W.K. Michener.  "River ecology and flood hazard mitigation.,"  Natural Hazards Review,  v.4,  2003,  p. 46.

Boglioli, M., C. Guyer and W.K. Michener.  "Mating opportunities of female gopher tortoises, Gopherus polyphemus, in relation to spatial isolation of females and their burrows.,"  Copeia,  2003,  p. 846.

Downey, L..  "Designing annotation mechanisms with users in mind: A paper prototyping case study from the Scientific Environment for Ecological Knowledge (SEEK).,"  Semantic Web User Interaction Workshop; International Semantic Web Conference,  2006, 

Downey, L..  "Group usability testing: Evolution in usability techniques.,"  Journal of Usability Studies,  v.2,  2007,  p. 133.

Gagnon, P., W. Michener, M. Freeman, and J. Brim Box.  "Unionid habitat and assemblage composition in Coastal Plain tributaries of Flint River (Georgia).,"  Southeastern Naturalist,  v.5,  2006,  p. 31.

Gonzalez, J.E., J.C. Luvall, D. Rickman, D. Comarazamy, A.J. Picon, E.H. Harmsen, H. Parsiani, N. Ramirez, R.E. Vasquez, R. Williams, R.B. Waide, and C.A. Tepley.  "Urban heat islands in coastal tropical cities.,"  EOS,  v.86,  2005,  p. 397.

Hale, S.S., A.H. Miglarese, M.P. Bradley, T.J. Belton, L.D. Cooper, M.T. Frame, C.A. Friel, L.M. Harwell, R.E. King, W.K. Michener, D.T. Nicolson and B.G. Peterjohn.  "Managing troubled data: Coastal data partnerships smooth data integration.,"  Environmental Monitoring and Assessment,  v.81,  2003,  p. 133.

Madin, J.S., S. Bowers, M. Schildhauer, S. Krivov, D. Pennington, and F. Villa.  "An ontology for describing and synthesizing ecological observational data.,"  Ecological Informatics,  v.2,  2007,  p. 279.

Michener, W..  "Meta-information concepts for ecological data management.,"  Ecological Informatics,  v.1,  2006,  p. 3.

Michener, W..  "Meta-information concepts for ecological data management.,"  Ecological Informatics,  v.1,  2006,  p. 3.

Michener, W., et al..  "Creating and providing data management services for the biological and ecological sciences.,"  IEEE Computer Society: 17th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management,  2005, 

Michener, W., et al..  "SEEK: Data integration and workflow solutions for ecology.,"  Proceedings of the workshop on data integration in the life sciences,  v.3615,  2005,  p. 321.

Michener, W., J. Beach, S. Bowers, L. Downey, M. Jones, B. Ludaescher, D. Pennington, A. Rajasekar, S. Romanello, M. Schildhauer, D. Vieglais, and J. Zhang.  "Data integration and workflow solutions for ecology. Proceedings of Data Integration in the Life Sciences, Second International Workshop, DILS 2005, San Diego, CA, July 20-22, 2005.,"  Lecture Notes in Computer Science,  v.3615,  2005,  p. 321.

Michener, W.K.  "Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth's species can survive in the midst of human enterprise.,"  Restoration Ecology,  v.12,  2004,  p. 306.

Michener, W.K., J.H. Beach, M.B. Jones, B. Ludaescher, D. Pennington, R.S. Pereira, A. Rajasekar, and M. Schildhauer.  "A knowledge environment for the biodiversity and ecological sciences.,"  Journal of Intelligent Information Systems,  v.29,  2007,  p. 111.

Pennington, D. and W. K. Michener.  "The EcoGrid and the Kepler Workflow System: A new platform for conducting ecological analyses.,"  ESA Bulletin,  v.86,  2005,  p. 169.

Pennington, D., J. Madin, F. Villa and I. Athanasiadis.  "Computer-supported collaborative knowledge modeling in ecology.,"  Proceedings: Workshop on Social and Collaborative Construction of Structured Knowledge Banff, Canada,  2007, 

Porter, J., P. Arzberger, H. Braun, P. Bryant, S. Gage, T. Hansen, P. Hanson, F. Lin, C. Lin, T. Kratz, W. Michener, S. Shapiro, and T. Williams..  "Wireless sensor networks for ecology.,"  Bioscience,  v.55,  2005,  p. 561.

Simkin, S.M. and W.K. Michener.  "Mound microclimate, nutrients and seedling survival.,"  American Midland Naturalist,  v.152,  2004,  p. 12.


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