Near-Real Time Data Streaming from the Coweeta LTER Environmental Sensor Network

佐治亚大学获得了一笔赠款，用于升级Coweeta LTER天气、径流和地面小气候传感器的现有网络，以便根据传感器的设置适当地通过卫星、蜂窝、无线电或无线局域网发射器无线传输数据。考维塔水文学实验室是世界上最古老和最知名的森林生态系统和水文研究中心之一，而即将升级的网络则支持整个南阿巴拉契亚地区(http://coweeta.ecology.uga.edu/).)的区域规模研究南部阿巴拉契亚森林是温带地区生物多样性和生产力最丰富的地区之一，但它们也经历了美国大陆一些最快速的城外增长。目前的传感器网络包括30个站点，分布在从西向东的海拔、水文和气候梯度上，从大烟山国家公园到马尔斯·希尔学院(北卡罗来纳州阿什维尔北部)，从杜克森林(北卡罗来纳州达勒姆)到白厅森林(佐治亚州雅典)。升级用于无线传输的地区性Coweeta LTER传感器网络将减少获取数据以及维护和校准仪器的旅行成本。它还将减少数据后处理的费用，并使将数据近乎实时地发布到公共网站成为可能。这次升级将使整个网络的观测实践和设备保持一致，从而为加强与学术、地方、州和联邦机构以及当地非营利组织的合作创造不同的机会。用户将能够将他们自己的观察结果与Coweeta LTER数据联系起来，探索全新的相互作用规模，其中包括提高管理阿巴拉契亚南部的水量、水质和生物多样性等生态系统服务的能力。

The University of Georgia has been awarded a grant to upgrade the existing network of Coweeta LTER weather, streamflow and terrestrial microclimate sensors to transmit data wirelessly via satellite, cellular, radio or WLAN transmitters as appropriate to the setting of the sensor. Coweeta LTER field operations are based at the USFS Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, one of the oldest and best-known centers for forest ecosystem and hydrologic research in the world, while the network to be upgraded supports regional scale research across Southern Appalachia (http://coweeta.ecology.uga.edu/). Southern Appalachian forests are among the most biodiverse and productive in the temperate world, but they are also experiencing some of the most rapid exurban growth in the continental U.S. The current sensor network includes 30 stations at multiples sites along a west-to-east elevational, hydrologic and climatic gradient from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Mars Hill College (north of Asheville, NC), and a latitudinal gradient from the Duke Forest (Durham, NC) to the Whitehall Forest (Athens, GA).The upgrade of the regional Coweeta LTER sensor network for wireless transmission will reduce travel costs to retrieve data and to maintain and calibrate instruments. It will also reduce the expense of post-processing data and make it possible to publish data to a public website in near real-time. The upgrade will introduce uniformity in observational practices and equipment across the network thus creating diverse opportunities for increased collaboration with academic, local, state and federal agencies as well as local non-profit groups. Users would be able to link their own observations to the Coweeta LTER data to explore entirely new scales of interactions that include improving the capacity to manage the ecosystem services of water quantity, water quality, and biodiversity in southern Appalachia.