Environmental Observatory Operations Meeting — Baltimore, October 22-23, 2007

1. Portal Performance - What issues were encountered in entering information collected by your project through the HIS portal for later use by yourself or others? What issues were encountered in drawing information out through the portal? How do problems vary among weather, surface water, groundwater, land use, and other types of numerical data? How about problems in entering or retrieving meta data? How about difficulties in interpreting meta data that others entered? What are your experiences in specifying equations or algorithms for others to use to calculate information not directly measured from your data?
   • Lead - Graham
2. Legacy Data - What issues have you encountered in obtaining and entering access to legacy data (information collected in the past or still being collected by others)? Issues in converting legacy data into desired time and space coordinates? Issues in using "data" generated by others in running model simulations? Issues in using data from remote sensing? Have you been able to obtain adequate meta data? What issues have arisen with respect to quality assurance/quality control with data you obtained from others?
   • Lead - Welty
3. Digital Watersheds - What is your vision for using a digital watershed to achieve your science goals? Are you satisfied with your progress toward realizing that vision? Is the potential offered by a digital watershed causing you to see any new windows of opportunity toward reaching your science goals? What obstacles are you encountering in forming a digital watershed? How are experiences changing your vision?
   • Lead - Bales
4. Sensor Selection - What advice do you have on sensor procurement? What logistical problems were encountered in getting field sensors to work? Here you can think about the cost of servicing, not really measuring what was expected, breakdowns, vandalism, etc. Do you have any data that can be used to estimate annual maintenance costs or instrument life? What suggestions do you have for keeping operations and maintenance costs to a minimum?
   • Lead - Hondzo
5. Field Deployment - What have you learned about optimizing sensor density or configuration? Replacement policy? Have you tried some good ideas for indirect measurement (inexpensive sensing of surrogate variables or using data obtained by remote sensing)?
   • Lead - Stevens
6. Model Support - What have been your successes and failures at drawing data through the "portal" for use in modeling? Have you tried using modeling to simulate "data" on additional items or "data" at other times and places? Are you entering simulated "data" for use by others?
   • Lead - Duffy
7. Science Achievements - Is your project on track in accomplishing its science goals? What obstacles have hindered progress? What have you been able to do to overcome them? The goal here is to expose problems so that we can all learn more.
   • Lead - Moore
8. Impact and Authorization Issues - Have you faced issues in accessing desired field sites (travel distance among sites, excessive walking, overcoming inclement weather, dealing with land owners, preventing harm to ecosystems or to endangered species). Have you faced any issues related to vandalism or to safety? Are you prepared to provide Environmental Impact Statements when they become needed.
   • Lead - Reed