The Oklahoma/Kansas cyberCommons: An Ecological Informatics Research Laboratory
Integrative ecological research efforts often collapses under the weight of the massive amounts of data they hope to integrate. We share our approach to addressing this by building a loosely-coupled data and analysis toolkit. This toolkit draws heavily from from FOSS4G, OGC services and open standards to enhance scientific analysis capabilities. We share several examples where we organize, process, enhance and expose spatiotemporal datasets, such as: 1) weather radar reflectivity data before quality control, used to classify biological targets; 2) archives of earth observing remote sensing satellite imagery and derrived products; 3) regional carbon flux modeling. We show the FOSS4G tools we draw upon and how we've arranged them into a system to meet our research goals.
Jonah is a member of the Eco-Informatics group at the University of Oklahoma. Eco-Informatics embeds IT professionals with ecological scientists to enhance research capabilities.