To help researchers gain an accurate picture of the health of a watershed, Microsoft Research collaborates with the Berkeley Water Center—located on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley—and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to build a "digital watershed."
The project goal: acquire and curate existing hydrologic data to understand historic conditions on key watersheds in California. ...
To cite just one example of immense data collection, in California, regional water quality boards, the California State Department of Water Resources, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Environmental Protection Agency each collect different sets of water quality measurements.
Says Deb Agarwal of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: "People assume that once they have their source of data, it’ll be great, and they can do whatever they want. But the data can be frustrating. I knew one researcher who spent three months trying to get the data set he wanted from an environmental database." ...
The data cubes allow simple browsing of datasets for data availability, data quality, and data relevance along "dimensions" such as location, variable time, or time period. The use of data cubes helps researchers who don’t have programming skills to add their own data. ...
By combining publically available data, digital watershed researchers such as Dr. James Hunt of the Berkeley Water Center hope to create models and forecasts that can be used by a wide range of water interests in a manner that has not previously been possible. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 7/06/2008 03:04:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
