SIS 495/2011:Topics

Nature of Science and Research

• Researcher: Miriam
• Discuss scientific inquiry and the scientific process; philosophical basis of
• Discuss the general process and nature of scientific data.
• Environmental Psychology Reference
• Environmental scientists
• Historical overview of Environmental Science (in North America) Reference

Nature of Information Science & Core Information Science Concepts

• Researcher: Lisa
• Define the core information science concepts for the class
• Information behavior - seeking, collecting, etc.

Scientists and Information

• Researcher: Todd
• relationship of scientific process and research to information and information science
• emergence of the data intensive research paradigm
• DataOne scientists baseline assessment
• merging blend of natural science and information science professionals (e.g. need to manage, archive, find data, etc.)
• Biodiversity information needs

Data collection and the data lifecycle

• Generation and diversity of environmental information
  • where does it come from? (observation of the natural world) How is it created? Role of the observer.
• Types of data- soil, water, air, species counts, etc
• Ways data can be collected (automated data collection, manual collection...citizens vs. scientists, advocates vs. objective observers)
• Data reporting units (mg/kg, ppm, ug/l...)
• Organizing environmental data
• Managing environmental data
• Interpreting environmental data
• Raw data vs. summarized data vs. interpreted data vs. modeled data
• QA/QC
• Data Quality Objectives
• finding environmental information / where is environmental information found?
  • major government databases
  • census data
• NSF Grant Guidelines on Data Management
• Information policies

The Environmental Data/Information Lifecycle

A possible organizing scheme for some of these topics may be the Geospatial Data Lifecycle proposed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee. There are seven stages:

Define

What is environmental information?

Inventory/Evaluate

• Where is the data? Who owns it? Who provides it?
• Data ownership, legal questions, copyright
• Managing or dealing with metadata

Obtain

• Purchase
• share or exchange data
• modify legacy data
• create new data.
• Exchanging and collaborating (information, data)
• Selecting reliable science data

Access

• Where will the data/information be published? How do we disseminate the data?
• Discuss pros and cons of open source and open data sharing

Maintain

Concerns about funding, personnel, infrastructure needs.

Use/Evaluate

User studies and evaluations. Have we met our goals?

Archive

How do we keep data for the long term after it is no longer being actively used?

Metadata

• Researcher: Priyanki
• Preparing data sets to model environmental processes
• How environmental data/observations go from environmental data object to metadata
• Environmental metadata

Technology and Tools or Tool Finding Issues

• Information Systems and the Environment Reference
• Database design & use for science/environmental data
• Spreadsheets for modeling and problem solving
• Environmental information management systems

Environmental Decision Making

• Map data life cycle model to environmental decision making model and highlight role of data at different points of decisions
• Environmental decision-making
  • who makes environmental decisions
  • role of the public in environmental decision making and interpretation of environmental information
• Tragedy of the Commons Reference
• Sampling bias
• interpretive bias
• Evaluation of environmental data

Science Communication

• Communicating environmental data
• Presenting environmental data
• politics of communicating and presenting environmental data/politicizing of environmental data
• citizen scientists
• information as power
• rhetoric
• stakeholders and public participation

Visualization

• Cool displays, youtube videos, etc.
• Environmental modeling- types of environmental models
• GIS

Disasters and Catastrophes

• Environmental causes
• Environmental results
  • Katrina, Pakistan floods, Indonesian tsunami, etc.
• role of environmental information in dealing with environmental disasters.
  • how does access to environmental information help, are there negatives to access, who has access and how, to what?
• Dealing with risk. Risk management, risk communication

Sharing and collaborating around EI

• Networks (sharing research)

Brainstorming Topics

• PARCC parameters and their relevance to data
• Environmental information in science education
  • need for, role of, lack of, examples of (Phenology and schools)