welcome to canopy project

THE CANOPY DATABASE PROJECT

The project's mission is to address issues of data acquisition, management, analysis and exchange relating to canopy studies at all stages of the research process. We develop informatics tools for canopy scientists, document and publish datasets that demonstrate use of these tools, characterize (and formalize in informatics terms) fundamental structures of the forest canopy, and relate those structures to functional characterizations for retrospective, comparative, and integrative studies.

We also aim to generalize the tools we develop (or show that they are generalizable) to the larger discipline of ecology and to articulate where current information technology is not adequate for implementing tools for these scientists. In the latter case, we communicate these needs to other researchers (specifically the database and information technology communities).

The project has three foci:

  1. Informatics Tools and Information Artifacts for Canopy Scientists.We are developing software to help canopy scientists design databases, publish forest structure and functional data, and analyze scientific data:
    1. a database design and warehouse tool (DataBank) presents our vision of how future ecologists might design, archive, and mine field databases.
    2. A visualization tool (CanopyView), creates data visualizations from DataBank datasets.
    3. An Internet reference site for canopy research, the Big Canopy Database, which consolidates information of interest to forest canopy researcher.
  2. Data acquisition and database development for collaborating researchers. We conducted fieldwork on forest structure and function for eight sites in a 1000-year chronosequence (ranging from 50 to 950- years) in the western Cascades of Washington State (1kcs ). Various other canopy research datasets, and LTER ecology datasets, have also been represented as DataBank databases, with several publicly available from DataBank.
  3. Conceptual and theoretical ecology.To develop useful informatics tools we also need general conceptual structures, and have begun to formulate generalized spatial categories and associated database components (templates) for forest canopies. This Conceptualization of Canopy Structural Space is based on 500 canopy and forest structure papers.

Our efforts to create database tools for the canopy research community will push forward the emerging field of canopy science. Our efforts could be viewed as a model for other emerging areas of ecology where data-integration and sharing can be effective in integrating results from different studies. We seek input from researchers in the field of canopy studies to contribute to the database, and from those outside the field who may have insights into making this process efficient and productive.

The project is funded by the National Science Foundation NSF DBI 04- 17311, CISE 01-31952, BIR 03-19309, 99-75510, 96-3O316, 93-07771.

Page last updated:   7/10/2007 11:18:37 AM