Environmental Informatics- Jeffrey D. Campbell - Consulting Services

Environmental Informatics Consulting

Jeffrey D. Campbell, Ph.D.

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Database Analysis Systems Design Information Visualization Web Design Speaking Writing

Database

Database design
Automated Import of Internet data
Enhancements to existing databases
Integration with Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Real-time data collection

Screen shot showing the types of data maintained for each fish. It also show an elegant way of choosing which one of several photographs to display.

Sample screen from fish database. Click for full size.

Database design

Fish Monitoring

Jeff developed a database to support analysis of long term studies of fish populations. The data is obtained by periodic sampling of fish at one of several locations by seine or net. The data includes the species, the number of that species that were caught and the length of the first twenty individual of each species caught. Analysis includes summaries reported to the state Department of Natural Resources and various ecological indicators.

Amphibian Activity

A database was initially developed to analyze my observations of frog and toad calling activity during mating season. This was later enhanced with data obtained from FrogWatch USA from other observers in the county.

Data Warehouse

Jeff created a data warehouse to consolidate environmental data to support multiple research and monitoring projects at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. This data includes meteorological data from multiple sources, water quality, tides, river flow and astronomical data (sun and moon rise and set, phase of moon). During the warehouse design, he identified and resolved common data inconsistencies such as time zone (UTC versus Eastern Time), daylight savings time, metric/English unit of measure conversions.

Turtle Movement and Behavior

A researcher had periodic data about the location of radio transmitters attached to turtles. Jeff upgraded the researcher's spreadsheets to a database to support further analysis and integration with the data warehouse. This will allow comparison of distance turtles moved with meteorological factors.

Automated import of Internet data

The data warehouse contains data from eight active sources in addition to a dozen relatively static sources. For example, weather data is updated every 15 minutes, while astronomical data can be computed for decades and imported once into the warehouse. Data sources include the National Weather Service, NOAA, US Geological Survey, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, US Naval Observatory, and local data. Since only periodic update (monthly, quarterly, on-demand) from the active sources is currently required, the current solution has a person performing the update. A simple user interface was developed to minimize this effort to the extent possible. (For example, several of the web sites only support requests for data to be emailed later, so full automation is not possible.). This strategy has proven to be valuable when data formats have been changed by the providers. While some programming changes have been needed, these have been transparent to the people maintaining the data in the warehouse. As the data providers expand their support for web services providing real-time data updates, these can be integrated into the data warehouse as needed. As of January 1, 2009, there were over 1.2 million records in the data warehouse.

Enhancements to existing databases

A small enhancement was made for an existing database of salamander migration data. Individual salamanders can be identified by their unique color patterns. A pattern coding scheme that has been used for several years. The new enhancement facilitate searching to determine whether or not a current salamander has been caught before.

Enhancements were made to customize a database for recording species found during a 24-hour Bio Blitz. The enhancements simplified data entry for volunteers with limited taxonomic knowledge using the system. The All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) database from Great Smokey Mountains National Park was used for the primary data entry. Since it required entry of data based on the genus and species, Jeff developed an interface to their database to allow searching at a level higher than genus.

ATBI Enhancement

Screen capture demonstrating selection for vertebrates (Phylum Chordata) while narrowing in on amphibians to find the genus and species for Fowlers Toad.

The help window describes the full functionality:
Use list boxes to select any taxonomic level. All lower levels are updated to only include the selected higher levels. (For example, if you choose the animal kingdom, only animal phyla, classes, etc are displayed). Double-click on the list box to clear the selection at that level (and lower levels).

To search for a common name, enter all or part of it in the box in the common name column and then click search.
NOTE: It will find all species with what you typed as part of the name in any part of the common name. It is often better to search for partial names because this avoids any problems with spaces or other inconsistencies in the names.

Click on the label at the top of the colunm ("Common Name", "Genus", etc) to sort by that column in ascending order (A -> Z). Click again to sort in reverse order (Z->A).

Integration with Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

This project is described in the information visualization page.

Real-time data collection

Jeff is developing a prototype system and supporting database to obtain real-time (5-15 minute interval) precipitation data along with radar images to support hydrological research. This is displayed using a custom GIS display within the analysis program. Budget cuts ended another project to archive real-time data from a Campbell Scientific CR5000 data logger after we established TCP/IP connectivity to the logger but before research quality data was available for archiving.