OPS 3
Advancing Ecological Understanding Using Network-Level Science

Tuesday, August 11, 2015: 4:30 PM-6:30 PM
Exhibit Hall, Baltimore Convention Center
Organizer:
Andrew M. Fox
Co-organizer:
Sandra Henderson
In an era of unprecedented impacts of human activities on ecosystems, ecologists are increasingly turning to big datasets from networks of long-term monitoring sites to help understand and predict how climate change, land use change and invasive species affect the world around us. These networks rely on methodologies that range from highly “top-down” standardized approaches, such as used by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), through more emergent assemblies of sites employed by Principal Investigator driven science as represented by Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites, Critical Zone Observatories (CZO) and AmerFlux, to “grass-root” coordination of experiments, such as the Nutrient Network (NutNet). The great power of such networks stems from the very large amounts of data they provide that sample ecosystem processes over a wide range of climatological and ecological conditions that can be used to develop general theory that can be employed to characterize ecosystem responses to environmental drivers at larger spatial and temporal scales. Information at these scales is most useful to decision makers and society-at-large. However, bringing together datasets from such diverse sources presents many challenges. Ecologists working with these large datasets must learn new and rapidly evolving technologies, and are reliant upon a level of support that is made possible only by the synergistic effect of collaboration. The primary goal of this session is to highlight on-going ecological research that provides insights into how to best enable scientific interoperability, including developing and sharing protocols, procedures, instrumentation, algorithms, metadata and models within- and across-networks. Fostering efficiencies in these interactions is essential if the full capabilities of these observation systems are to be leveraged to their maximum potential to produce innovative solutions to major challenges in ecology. Individuals are finding synergies,working together, and producing solutions to challenging problems across a range of topics such as comparability across diverse systems, developing new analytical and data processing, and spatial analysis methods. A secondary goal of this workshop is to explore how educators working at or with network-level science organizations make the large datasets meaningful to a variety of educational audiences. Given the enormity of the task, it is imperative that educators have an opportunity to share tools and approaches including the creation and dissemination of instructional modules and educational resoruces.
Assimilating and reporting uncertainty in eddy covariance data products across the NEON network
David J. Durden, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); Stefan Metzger, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); Jeffrey R. Taylor, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Natchaya Pingintha-Durden, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.)
Integration of below-ground measurements in the NEON terrestrial observation system
Lee F. Stanish, NEON; Eve-Lyn S. Hinckley, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Courtney L. Meier, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
NEON soil pits: Characterizing and archiving soil properties across the continent
Rommel C. Zulueta, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); Edward Ayres, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); Joshua A. Roberti, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); Derek E. Smith, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); David J. Durden, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); Michael Denslow, Appalachian State University, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
How NEON’s network of standardized sensor observations enable consistency testing for related data sets
Derek E. Smith, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Joshua A. Roberti, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Jeffrey R. Taylor, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.)
Informatics serving network science: Data standardization and interoperability at NEON
Claire K. Lunch, National Ecological Observatory Network; Christine Laney, NEON
Catalyzing carbon cycle science through synergies among research networks
Andrew M. Fox, National Ecological Observatory Network; Stefan Metzger, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON); Olaf Menzer, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCSB
Long-term observations and analysis for an integrated carbon observing system
Beverly E. Law, Oregon State University; Logan T. Berner, Oregon State University; Zhenlin Yang, Oregon State University; Andres Schmidt, Oregon State University
Networked data need networked education
Kayri Havens, Chicago Botanic Garden; Sandra Henderson, NEON, Inc.; Sarah Newman, NEON
Revealing and translating phenological patterns and predictions at the national scale
Alyssa Rosemartin, USA National Phenology Network & University of Arizona; Jake Weltzin, US Geological Survey; Katharine L. Gerst, USA National Phenology Network; Ellen G. Denny, USA National Phenology Network; Sara Schaffer, USA National Phenology Network
Citizen science facilitates analysis of network-level data sets: PhenoCam as a case study
Margaret Kosmala, Harvard University; Rebecca Cheng, NEON, Inc.; Sandra Henderson, NEON, Inc.; Andrew D. Richardson, Harvard University
DataONE: Enhancing discovery and use of earth and environmental science data through education
William Michener, University of New Mexico; Yiwei Wang, University of New Mexico; Amber Budden, DataONE; Viv Hutchison, U.S. Geological Survey; Carly Strasser, DataCite
CTFS-ForestGEO: A worldwide network monitoring forests in an era of global change
Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; Stuart J. Davies, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
A holistic view of soil ecosystems through integrative eukaryotic and prokaryotic metatranscriptome analysis
Jeffrey L. Blanchard, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Lauren Alteio, University of Massachusetts Amherst; William Rodriguez, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Grace Pold, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Kristen M. DeAngelis, University of Massachusetts; Serita Frey, University of New Hampshire; Linda van Diepen, University of New Hampshire; Jerry M. Melillo, Marine Biological Laboratory
Rolling out the scientific capabilities of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
David Tazik, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Andrea S. Thorpe, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Melissa Slater, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Charlotte Roehm, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.); Jeffrey Taylor, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON, Inc.)