The Black Rock Forest Consortium is being awarded a grant to improve its collection and management of environmental data and to enhance access to these data by users including both researchers and educational groups. A recent assessment of environmental data management and access at the Consortium's Black Rock Forest field station in southeastern New York State concluded that the research community would benefit from easier access to a broader selection of the environmental data collected in the forest than is currently available. A series of sensor stations distributed around the forest measure and record data on climate, soil conditions, streamflow and stream chemistry, energy balance and atmospheric chemistry. The sensor stations employ different systems for data collection and storage, and methods of access to these data also vary from direct web-based retrieval to individual processing of data requests by the field station's Data Manager. This grant will provide additional sensors, communications equipment, new computers and software to collect and automate the delivery of the majority of the station's environmental data streams, with appended metadata, to web sites hosted by Columbia University which will provide ready data access, visualization, and storage in a data repository.
Over the last fifteen years the Black Rock Forest Consortium has responded to increasing numbers of requests for easier and more reliable access to research data from the Black Rock Forest. The Consortium has committed to provide open and unrestricted access to environmental data from the forest wherever possible. Nearly all of the twenty-one academic member institutions of the Consortium have user groups who need access to forest environmental data. The user groups of interest include scientists doing research directly in the Black Rock Forest as well as others, including researchers not affiliated with the Consortium, who seek remote access to environmental data from many sites to conduct regional, national, and global-scale studies. The new and openly accessible data streams will also create new opportunities for teaching, learning, and the integration of research with education. A diverse group of people interact with the field station including members of groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. The Consortium's Virtual Forest Initiative will employ several of the newly automated data streams to meet its goal of broadly enhancing environmental understanding through the use of digital technologies including custom-designed online tools available to all. For more information see the Black Rock Forest website at www.blackrockforest.org/.
Black Rock Forest Consortium was awarded this grant in October 2010 and expended all of the funds on equipment and project-related expenses by the end of September 2012. A plan was devised, in collaboration with an expert communications consultant, to optimize data transmission around the Black Rock Forest environmental sensor network and to create new web pages for data display and downloading. New computer and communications equipment (radios, modems, directional antennae, and dataloggers) were purchased and installed. As a result, on-site environmental data management was substantially enhanced and external access is now greatly improved through new web pages featuring innovative graphical interfaces and downloading capability (http://blackrock.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/portal/). Data from three of the primary sensor stations in the Black Rock Forest (Open Lowland, Ridgetop, and Cascade Brook) are now available in near-real time, with graphing capabilities to view current and historic data, and to download data sets with appended metadata. These include standard meteorological data as well as solar energy and net radiometry, soil moisture and temperature, atmospheric ozone and CO2,stream flow and selected water chemistry parameters. The enhanced access to the majority of the automated forest environmental data streams through the web link on the forest’s website (www.blackrockforest.org) should facilitate current and future scientific study in Black Rock Forest and produce broader benefits through ongoing education and outreach to the two dozen institutions in the Black Rock Forest Consortium, as well as to any interested parties with access to the internet. I checked my Common Ground Farm files and couldn't find an email address for Alex, but did locate an address and phone number: 600 Wheeler Hill Road, Wappingers Fall NY 12590; 298-0888. He is doing some really interesting work in establishing Glynwood as an organic farming venture. Interestingly, he and Common Ground Farm's former farmer have taken over the CSA operation and expanded it in really creative ways.
