Working in the Antarctic environment poses numerous challenges, but also provides unique opportunities. One critical opportunity for the McMurdo LTER (MCM) is organizing and providing access to the site’s Data and Information (D&I) resources across an international community of 50-plus project scientists, colleagues and students working at one of the most remote field stations on Earth. There is a high level of public interest in Antarctic projects in general and the anomalous, exotic Dry Valleys area in particular.
The MCM grant proposal was written with the intention that, to the largest extent possible, the project’s D&I resources would be integrated and displayed interactively via a Geographic Information System (GIS) operating across the global Internet. In ways which could barely have been imagined five years ago when the proposal was in preparation, both D&I management and GIS technologies have advanced to make this goal feasible.
In August 1995, the MCM was awarded joint support by the NSF Database Activities Programs and Office of Polar Programs to formally begin the development of its GIS-based D&I management system. The overall project is referred to as SOLA (Science On-Line Antarctica). The first phase, requirements analysis, will proceed during fall and winter 1995-96 with assistance from the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, and will culminate in a planning review workshop in April 1996. This invitational workshop, to be held at the Biosphere 2 facility in Tucson, Arizona, is co-sponsored by the LTER Climate and Synthesis committees, with participation of the LTER Data Managers. The goals of the workshop are to solicit comments and suggestions from the entire LTER community on McMurdo’s SOLA prototype efforts, and to provide the community with an opportunity to be involved in the ongoing SOLA development process, which also may hold promise for the LTER Network as a whole.
For more information: Evangeline Elston, SOLA Project Coordinator, 702/674-7700, eelston@maxey.dri.edu