Adding 'Real-Time' Data to the Black Rock Forest Digital Library to Enable Students to Engage in Predictive Investigations

该项目将(A)实施一个系统，用于在收集数据后立即(即近乎“实时”)将来自仪表化森林内的环境传感器的数据传送到教室计算机，并(B)证明数据的“实时”使之有可能实现用存档数据无法实现的教育目标。仪器林是纽约哈德逊高地地区的黑岩森林(BRF)。两个陆地传感器站和一个河流传感器站自动监测和记录环境参数，如空气、水和土壤温度、太阳辐射、降水、相对湿度和河流流量。该项目将把这些环境数据带入专业管理的数字数据库、万维网、易于使用的数据可视化工具、学生计算机和学生想象力--所有这些都将在收集后的几个小时内完成。此外，该项目还将开发和测试一个模范的本科生调查，展示实时数据对教育的价值，并在现实条件下练习实时数据链接。学生们将研究档案降雨量和河流流量数据，开发一个将两者联系起来的模型，然后使用他们的模型来预测未来几天的河流流量。大多数成年地球科学家已经花费了社会向地球科学界提出的与未来有关的大部分问题。我们需要找到培养我们的学生严格而大胆地思考未来的方法。预测性调查是实现这一目标的一种方式。

9907689KastensThe project will (a) implement a system for delivering data from environmental sensors within an instrumented forest to classroom computers immediately after the data are collected (i.e. in near "real-time"), and (b) demonstrate that the "real-time-ness" of the data makes it possible to accomplish educational objectives that could not be accomplished with archived data. The instrumented forest is the Black Rock Forest (BRF) in the Hudson Highlands region of New York. Two terrestrial sensor stations and one stream sensor station automatically monitor and record environmental parameters such as air, water, and soil temperature, solar radiation, precipitation, relative humidity and stream discharge. The project will bring these environmental data into a professionally managed digital data library, onto the World Wide Web, into an easy-to-use data visualization tool, onto student computers, and into student imaginations-all within a few hours after it is collected. In addition, the project will develop and test an exemplary undergraduate investigation, which will showcase the value of real-time data for education, and exercise the real-time data link under realistic conditions. Students will examine archival precipitation and stream discharge data, develop a model linking the two, and then use their model to predict what the stream discharge will be a few days into the future. Most adult geoscientists have spent most of the questions that society is posing to the geoscience community have to do with the future. We need to find ways to train our students to think rigorously but boldly about the future. Predictive investigations are one way to do this.