This upgrade of computing facilities will allow the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station of Michigan State University to realize more effectively its mission of reserch on living systems and resources. The upgrade will allow the station to continue to function as a regional and national center of excellence in ecological research, stimulate collaborative research, and permit more extensive use of the considerable investment and resources which the Station represents. The present computing system is inadequate to meet these functions; it is aging, overloaded, prone to failure and is a bottleneck to research productivity. The principal achievements of the upgrade will be to increase system reliability, capacity, and support, and to allow further development of the maintenance of local and wide area networking. The award will provide new shared facilities which cannot be managed by individual laboratories or investigators and - an improved network infrastructure which is required to support this upgraded system. It will also permit the Station to continue to assist other field stations in developing data management capability. * * *
