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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2006

  • Title: Ensuring Reliable Datasets for Valid Environmental Models and Useful Environmental Forecasts
  • Primary Author: Aaron Ellison (Harvard University)
  • Additional Authors: Emery Boose (Harvard Forest); Lori Clarke (UMASS Amherst); David Foster (Harvard University); Julian Hadley (Harvard Forest); Lee Osterweil (University of Massachusetts - Amherst ); Alexander Wise (UMASS Amherst)
  • Abstract:

    This collaborative project involving researchers from the Harvard Forest and the University of Massachusetts continues the development and evaluation of a set of cyberinfrastructure tools to facilitate the production of reliable datasets and their appropriate use in developing valid models and useful forecasts of environmental processes. Data produced by the ecological community are burgeoning, but greater quantities of data will not necessarily lead to results of higher quality. Indeed, the sheer volume of data complicates the work of dataset consumers who must identify reliable datasets that can provide strong support for products of scientific research. Our enhancements of the analytic web formalism and SciWalker prototype tool (Ellison et al. 2006) focus on supporting dataset consumers by providing them with precise structures for defining the processes by which datasets have been produced, and powerful analytic tools to support evaluation of the suitability of those processes for producing reliable datasets, verifiable and valid models, and useful forecasts of environmental change.


    Work to date has focused successfully on supporting dataset producers, allowing them to regenerate prior results, verify existing models, and generate new, reliable scientific datasets. Work in progress suggests how to build upon this work to support dataset consumers. The analytic web formalism will be augmented with a far more precise graph structure to render scientific process definitions more complete and tractable. In addition, SciWalker will be enhanced with a powerful suite of analysis tools to permit the evaluation of the reliability and reproducibility of these processes. The effectiveness of these enhancements will be evaluated through their application to the automation and analysis of real-time data streams and processes used to model water budgets and to study critical issues concerned with the Earth’s water resources. In general, our work will accelerate the rate at which validated environmental datasets are produced and made available. It will also serve as a vehicle for adding to our understanding of how to represent, analyze, and automate complex real-world processes.





    Ellison, A. M., L. J. Osterweil, L. Clarke, J. L. Hadley, A. Wise, E. Boose, D. R. Foster, A. Hanson, D. Jensen, P. Kuzeja, E. Riseman, and H. Schultz. 2006. Analytic webs support the synthesis of ecological datasets. Ecology 87: 000-000 (in press).

  • Research Category: Forest-Atmosphere Exchange
    Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
    Watershed Ecology