NEON Data Services Working Group (DSWG) Meeting 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 22, 2010 12:00 pm Pacific Participants --------------- Jones, Peet, Hutchison, Schimel, Aulenbach, Ruhl, Vieglais, Gardiner, Palanisamy, Griffith, Burek, Parsons, Domenico, Habermann, Greenlee, Sangil, Guralnick, Erickson Notes -------- Background discussion ----------------------------- Schimel -- overview and status report on NEON -- Vision of NEON: provide env inf on critical questions, in most usable possible way -- sites selected for representativeness, applicability to grand challenge questions -- flow from sensors, people, through qa/calibration, through publication to user communities -- substantial number of data sets come from outside the observatory -- user model: science/education/decision maker using NEON information as seamlessly as possible -- data from PIs, or LTER, or federal Inv and monitoring programs -- about 120 high-level data products in initial incarnation (539 variables) -- annual summaries -- through assimilation models that produce gridded products across entire nation -- observatory is about information, and making that information usable -- DSWG is at heart: standards for products, how to capture provenance, assess usability of data -- goal to make data as interoperable as possible for 539 variables spanning atmosphere to genomics -- what are the key standards, best practices -- what are the early, mid, and late project implementation priorities -- now NEON is looking to move from proposal phase (8000) pages to working with community to make operational decisions Questions: Haberman: what is relation between 120 products and 539 variables 539 are the level 1 data variables 120 are the level 4 data products, assimilate the 539 variables Mike: how many domains? RS to genomics? How many domains are we talking about Schimel: less than a dozen, on the scale of 'atmospheric science' Followup: how many schema are we dealiing with? Schimel: grist for the committee, but probably 4-6? Jones: NEON familiar enough Haberman: familiar enough to get started Griffith, Vieglais, Sangil Scope of work discussion -- review document on wiki -- how extensive are the external data? -- DEM, MODIS, -- need provenance and full attribution for those -- about 40 data sets -- mainly in category of land use -- also products they want to interoperate with -- not a strong handle on what these are -- parsons: how related to LTER data? -- schimel: 1. NEON to LTER as a provider to LTER sites -- should be easy to use in the LTER context as possible 2. NEON data activities will continue several products started at LTER, complementarity -- most NEON data are 'observational', whereas a lot of LTER is on manipulative, process studies -- needs interoperability -- what are the high-priority target communities? -- list isn't discrete -- lots of communities at various levels of organization -- disease and microbial ecology as partners, sometimes already part of LTER, others not -- item for the group: what communities do we see as discrete and that should be addressed -- could address it as different levels of interoperability -- for some groups, metadata-only interoperability -- for other key domains, deeper levels of integration -- parsons: also identify other community portals that would be relevant, and distribution mechanisms [not so much the portals as the protocols and metadata standards that different portals use. In other words let those portals that want the data or metadata come get it] -- user communities: who prioritizes them? -- schimel -- first community is scientific research community -- others, such as decision makers are 2nd, 3rd, or 4th, etc. -- educators at a variaety of levels (further out on the scale) -- committees advice on segments of research community would be most useful -- don't necessarily focus on education targets, etc, yet in the priority list -- citizen science may be higher on the list -- does GIS provide a crosscut across community? -- possibly, but there are other paradigms (e.g., bioinformatics, girdded modeling, assimilation modeling, process study investigators focused on time series) also should be considered -- pete Ruhl: who else should NEON interact with? e.g., ESIP, Initial deliverables ----------------------- -- Target user communities -- focus on researchers -- what are their current practices, activities -- we should produce a synopsis/overview of the landscape -- pick a few to understand in greater detail -- Metadata standards -- Data standards -- Provenance approaches -- persistence of availability of data sets -- citability of data sets (getting e.g., a DOI) -- Data distribution protocols -- services that NEON should support (e.g., OGC, OPeNDAP, etc) -- Data Portals and aggregators -- Recommended partnerships and interactions (e.g., ESIP, others) for standards, etc. (in each of above sections) -- leverage existing activities (e.g., DataONE work on data citation) Meta-considerations re: deliverables recommendation -- need to highlight tradeoffs in above to help NEON with decisionmaking -- Sangil: would like to see biographies for the committee -- Wiki section for "Why am I here" -- Sangil: has NEON started talking to target early data consumers-- what do they expect in terms of consuming data? A process to evaluate current metadata & data standards on the light of consumer expectations. Action items --------------- * Jones: doodle for future meeting times (standard slot, 3rd week of each month) * Jones: load notes to wiki * Jones: enumerate deliverable items on wiki * Aulenbach: help work out connectivity issues for the wiki -- contact Steve Aulenbach at NEON directly for your NEON DSWG wiki logon credentials -- 720.746.4855 -- saulenbach@neoninc.org * All: review the deliverables and make expansions/comments in preparation for next meeing * All: review background data products for next meeting