Thursday 18 October 2012

Post 1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A major component in ecological research is the discovery, visualisation and interpretation of the relationships between complex biological systems and their distribution in space and environment.

This project will explore the potential for visualising and analysing ecological and related data  from multiple plots and/or locations provided by the TREND SA project and spatial data from the ALA  - leading to the ability to make comparisons between these data.

“This one-year project unifies and combines spatial, multi-spectral remote sensing, ecological and genomics data in a single tool to meet the interdisciplinary data needs of scientists studying and managing Australian terrestrial ecosystems. Soils-to-Satellites will enable data users to analyse and display different types of research data more effectively,” says Craig Walker, Director of the Eco-informatics Facility of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) at The University of Adelaide.


For the first time, the project combines exemplar vegetation and genomics data produced by the TREND component of TERN’s Multi-Scale Plot Network (MSPN) facility with  the rich spatial and biodiversity information from the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA).  These TREND data will be supported by and provided from the TERN Eco-informatics ÆKOS data repository.


The Soils to Satellites tool will re-use and extend the existing infrastructure and functionality provided by the ALA’s open infrastructure and TERN Eco-informatics AEKOS platform.


Peter Doherty, Programme Manager of the Atlas of Living Australia, says “Thanks to support from ANDS and DIISRTE, this project is a great example of adding value to Australia’s investment in e-research assets.  We are pleased to be collaborating with the leading national research capabilities of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) for terrestrial ecosystems to build the Soils-to-Satellites tool.  Both teams are looking forward to combining our collective data infrastructure expertise and make ecosystem science even more productive and effective.”


This project is supported by the Australian National Data Service and the Atlas of Living Australia. Both capabilities are supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Program and the Education Investment Fund (EIF) Super Science Initiative.

1 comment:

David F. Flanders said...

I like the quote, a nice way to provide context.

There are lots of partners in this work, is that going to be a risk for achieving it?