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

格鲁吉亚大学获得了一笔赠款，用于升级现有的Coweeta LTER天气，气流和陆地微气候传感器网络，以便通过卫星，蜂窝，无线电或WLAN发射机无线传输数据，以适应传感器的设置。Coweeta LTER现场操作基于USFS Coweeta水文实验室，这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，而将要升级的网络支持整个南阿巴拉契亚的区域规模研究（http：//coweta.ecology.uga.edu/）。南阿巴拉契亚森林是温带世界中生物多样性和生产力最高的森林之一，但它们也经历着美国大陆中一些最快速的郊区增长。当前的传感器网络包括从大烟山国家公园到火星山学院沿沿着西向东的海拔、水文和气候梯度分布在多个地点的30个站点（北卡罗来纳州阿什维尔以北）和从杜克森林（北卡罗来纳州达勒姆）到白厅森林（佐治亚州雅典）的纬度梯度。它还将减少后处理数据的费用，并使近实时地将数据发布到公共网站成为可能。这次升级将使整个网络的观测做法和设备统一起来，从而为加强与学术、地方、州和联邦机构以及地方非营利团体的合作创造各种机会。用户将能够将自己的观测结果与考维塔LTER数据联系起来，探索全新的相互作用规模，包括提高阿巴拉契亚南部水量、水质和生物多样性等生态系统服务的管理能力。

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.