Submitted by John Porter, VCR LTER
As part of International LTER outreach activities in Eastern Europe, in conjunction with local host Dr. Edit Kovácsné Láng, Dr. Kristin Vanderbilt of the Sevilleta LTER site organized a week-long training workshop on information management in Vacratot Hungary October 29 through November 3, 2000. The workshop had participants from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. U.S. LTER participants, in addition to Dr. Vanderbilt, were Dr. Peter McCartney (CAP), and Dr. John Porter (VCR).
During five intensive days the workshop covered a wide variety of topics in lecture, discussion and laboratory formats:
- Concepts in Ecological Information Management
- Distinctive Characteristics of Ecological Information
- Developing Good Collaborative Relationships Between Scientists and Information Managers
- Information Management Policies
- Using Microsoft ACCESS
- Developing World-Wide Web Pages
- Database Design and Modeling
- The Data Cycle
- Quality Control and Quality Assurance
- Techniques for Connecting Databases to the WWW
- Administration of WWW servers
- Ecological Metadata and the Global Terrestrial Observing System [GTOS]
The laboratory portions of the training sessions were greatly facilitated by access to a computational laboratory with Internet connections and six PC workstations provided by the Hungarian Botanical Institute. During laboratory exercises, workshop participants designed databases, practiced simple QA/QC procedures, ran database queries and created web pages.
Workshop presenters were able to build on the increasingly large amount of material on ecological information management. The text for the course was the new "Ecological Data: Design, Management and Processing" book, edited by William Michener and James Brunt of the LTER Network Office. Material in the form of Powerpoint slides were also obtained from William Michener of the LTER Network Office and Ray McCord and Dick Olson of Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Participants in the workshop set up a Web page containing all the workshop training materials at: http://www.krnap.cz/lter/, and photos of the workshop are available at: http://www.vcrlter.virginia.edu/images /lter_network/ILTER_Hungary_2000/IM_ Training/
Following the workshop, Dr. Vanderbilt spent an additional several weeks in Hungary helping to establish soils research plots at the Síkfökút deciduous forest LTER site near Eger, Hungary in association with Dr. János Attila Tóth. Dr. Porter stayed and additional week and made one-day visits to each of the Hungarian LTER sites (Kiskun [sand dunes, grassland and shrubland], Síkfökút [deciduous forest] and Lake Balaton [aquatic]). Photos from those sites are available at: http://www.vcrlter.Virginia.EDU/images/lter_network/ILTER_Hungary_2000/ and more detailed videos of the tours are available on request.