Design and Use of Environmental Observatories and Observing Systems for Estuaries
Session Date: May 28th 2010
Session Time: 12:25
Session Lead: Bill Ball
Session Co-Lead(s): Lewis Linker, Doug Wilson
Session Abstract: Environmental observatories and observing systems are under continuing development as platforms for data acquisition, storage, and analysis to support a wide variety of potential users, including research scientists, resource managers, educators, commercial operations, and the public at large. A well-designed observatory enhances the opportunities for interaction between observational data and models of multiple types. This session invites a range of platform presentations and posters about on-going or planned activities related to observatories for the Chesapeake Bay and other estuarine systems. Topics could include (but are not limited to) the following: • Novel uses of observatory facilities and products for -- model development and application; -- interpretation and analysis of observational data; -- predictions and forecasting. • New approaches for handling and storing data streams in environmental observatories; • Methods for storing, documenting, and using model output in repositories; • Creation and testing of cyberinfrastructure tools for observatory use; • Lessons learned in past and current environmental observatory projects; and • Future directions for environmental observatories on the Chesapeake Bay including their potential influence on modeling applications.
Presentations:
Post-Session Review: Environmental observatories and observing systems are under continuing development as platforms for data acquisition, storage, and analysis to support a wide variety of potential users, including research scientists, resource managers, educators, commercial operations, and the public at large. A well-designed observatory enhances the opportunities for interaction between observational data and models of multiple types.
This session included presentations on aspects of observatory conception, design, and implementation that spanned from specific issues of data access and web service provision (Perlman and Aguayo) through some examples of modern tools and algorithms for sensing and surface currents and forecasting drifter location (Garner) to overall conception, implementation, and preliminary results of some major observatory operations on the Chesapeake (Chesapeak Bay Environmental Observatory, Ball) and in the Susquehanna watershed (Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory, Duffy). The session ended with a talk by Ilya Zaslavsky of the CBEO team, as a segue into the afternoon CBEO workshop, where there was demonstration of the “CBEO portal” on the SDSC’s servers, as a prototype demonstration of network accessed data and workflows for research related to the Chesapeake Bay.
