Connecting RMBL to the Larger World

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The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) is awarded a grant to enhance its research and education programs installing a set of radios to bring increased bandwidth to the station. A 501c3 organization, RMBL advances the deep scientific understanding of nature that promotes informed stewardship of the Earth. Each year RMBL hosts 200 student researchers and scientists from 100+ institutions, providing access to protected research sites and the research facilities needed to serve as a bridge between field sites and their home institutions. Research at RMBL has provided critical insights into a range of ecological and evolutionary questions, including evolution, stream ecology, climate change, population dynamics, behavioral ecology, and mutualisms. Additionally, research at RMBL has informed policy on management of streams, water and air quality, and climate change. This grant will pay for installation of a series of radios that will bring bandwidth to the station. Currently RMBL obtains internet through a fiberoptic cable on a system operated by Qwest. This cable provides a T1 line, with a capacity of 1.5 Mbps. Given the large number of scientists and students hosted at RMBL, this bandwidth is woefully inadequate. By installing radios linking the station to a local service provider's Optical Carrier- 3 Internet Connection, the station will be able to substantially increase bandwidth on a cost effective basis when compared to alternate solutions.This project will increase RMBL's ability to document and understand a changing world. Currently only a small percentage of the information collected by scientists makes it into the public domain. By increasing bandwidth to the station, RMBL will be able to more effectively support the students and scientists work at the station, as well as increase the flow of information from the station to the larger world, including information from RMBL's automated sensors and data collected by scientists. This grant will support education activities. Both undergraduate and graduate students work directly with research scientists, including students funded through NSF's Research Experience for Undergraduates program. Increased bandwidth will help students do background work for their research projects, as well as support teaching them how to make their data publicly available. For more information about RMBL, please visit the website at http://www.rmbl.org/.