Advancing cyberinfrastructure for accessing ecological data

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New informatics tools and resources have the potential to advance our understanding of how biological processes interact over multiple spatial and temporal scales to structure natural communities and ecosystems. This project will enhance the reuse and integration of long-term ecological data by increasing its accessibility. These improvements could stimulate data synthesis and raise new lines of inquiry by creating a well-documented and readily accessible repository for long-term environmental data. Two complementary activities will stabilize access to long-term ecological research data through the Provenance Aware Synthesis Tracking Architecture (PASTA) data repository. Data packages (data plus metadata) uploaded into PASTA meet high standards of quality and integrity consistent with community standards. The first task will be to identify a scalable performance-based metadata search engine and deploy it into PASTA as a replacement for the currently-used but aging Metacat repository. Once a search engine method is selected, examples will be researched and tested for use with content stored in the Ecological Metadata Language and for use within the PASTA framework. Final replacement of Metacat will require a transition strategy to minimize downtime of PASTA. Both performance and stability will increase by removing older technology that results in search 'bottlenecks' and replacing it with faster search algorithms that have been tested through extensive community use. The second task is to complete testing of a new PASTA Member Node for use with DataONE. This new node will improve usability of long-term ecological data by disseminating data products through a global data network. Once a suitable metadata search engine is identified, the PASTA Member Node will be synchronized with DataONE infrastructure as new data packages are uploaded into PASTA. Once synchronization occurs, the DataONE Coordinating Node metadata archive will be tested to ensure all available data packages, including metadata and data, have been registered in DataONE. This project will increase opportunities for synthesis and will improve understanding of natural ecosystems by improving access to high quality, long-term data. Data will be readily accessible by researchers from a broad range of disciplines, educators, students, policy makers, and managers.