Information Management Outreach in the East Asia-Pacific Region (EAPR-ILTER)

EAPR-ILTER Information Management Workshop

Peter McCartney (CAP) and Kristin Vanderbilt (SEV) traveled to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in July 2001 to teach a three-day Information Management Workshop for scientists in the East Asia-Pacific Region ILTER. Travel and materials funds for the workshop were provided by a grant from NSF to Tony Fountain of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). Tony Fountain organized the workshop with the assistance of Dr. Tsogtbaatar and Dr. Amarsaikhan of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. The workshop was conducted immediately following the regional ILTER meeting that was held at Lake Hovsgol, Mongolia to encourage scientists attending the meeting to stay for the workshop. Participants from Mongolia, Taiwan, Korea and Thailand used the computer lab with Internet access at the Mongolian Technical University for the workshop.

The objective of the workshop was to give participants some training in ecological information management theory and techniques. Lecture and laboratory topics included:

• Basic Concepts of Information Management
• The Relationship Between Data and Research
• Database Design and Modeling
• SQL and Data Query
• Ecological Metadata
• Connecting Databases to the WWW
• HTML and Web Page Design
• XML
• Data Archives
• Quality Control and Quality Assurance

Tony Fountain lectured on data mining.

The participants enjoyed designing and authoring web pages about themselves. Many were initially unfamiliar with the structure and function of relational databases, but all did well with an exercise in which they were asked to model, create and query a database using Microsoft Access. The more advanced students successfully used ASP scripts to query their databases from the web. The workshop agenda is available at http://www.sdsc.edu/sdsc-lter/imw/index.html.

Several positive things have occurred as a result of the workshop. Shortly after the workshop, the Mongolian participants met with Dr. Galbaatar, the General Secretary of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS), and formed the Organizing Group for Databases in the MAS. The Mongolians have also resolved to create a Mongolian LTER web site. As a follow-up to the workshop, Tony Fountain is investigating opportunities for hosting a Mongolian scientist from the workshop at the SDSC for a year to study data mining.

Regional EAPR-ILTER Meeting

The 4th International Conference on Long-Term Ecological Research in the East-Asia Pacific Region (EAPR-ILTER) was held July 2-7, 2001 in Lake Hovsgol National Park, Mongolia. Dr. Peter Arzberger of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) spearheaded the information management-related conference activities. His talk entitled "Information and Computing Infrastructure for Global Environmental Research: Examples and Requirements" explored information management needs for large-scale synthetic research. He specifically encouraged initiating long-term interactions between the regional EAPR LTER sites and regional information technology centers such as those in Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Peter also led a session in which scientists discussed mechanisms for developing expertise of information managers in the EAPR-ILTER. Proposed activities include:

1. Creating a network of EAPR-ILTER information managers who attend an annual meeting and who participate in the steering groups of the national LTER efforts
2. Sending a representative from the EAPR information management community to the annual LTER information managers' meeting in the United States
3. Holding workshops to build the knowledge base of EAPR information managers
4. Long-term stays by EAPR information managers at LTER sites or computer centers for training. Scientists in the EAPR-ILTER are initiating a cooperative multi-country decomposition study, and plan to make data management a key component of this research effort.