Environmental and Information Technology Group
Staff
Employee Name : Kevin E. Browne
Department: Biology Department – Natural Reserves
Work Location: UC James Reserve – Idyllwild
Working Title: Information Systems Manager
GENERAL SUMMARY OF DUTIES / RESPONSIBILITIES
The University of California Natural Reserve System (NRS) and the University of California, Riverside have entered a partnership to maintain and improve software and data management systems for NRS reserves. The NRS Information Manager will be in close contact with the individual reserves as well as the NRS system-wide office through site visits. The employee will maintain, design, prototype, and implement data management solutions for the UC NRS. Principal duties of the position will include: coordination with the NRS Information Management Committee to prioritize tasks and implement guiding principles and concepts for NRS data, developing software and database tools for internet-based data accessibility among sites, and developing specifications for the hardware infrastructure necessary for long term maintenance of these facilities. This individual will work closely with NRS reserve’s staff, and the NRS IMC to meet NRS needs, and will adopt and leverage solutions from existing ecological informatics developments occurring at NCEAS, OBFS, LTER and elsewhere when appropriate.
DUTIES
Under direction, develop and maintain a network-wide web site for UC NRS field sites, and coordinate communication and networking among sites by maintaining email list services, personnel databases, reserve application databases, a cross-site data catalog, and other useful information resources.
Under direction, design, implement, and test internet-accessible data management solutions for use by scientists in the UC NRS, utilizing existing solutions from NCEAS and LTER where appropriate.
In conjunction with NRS reserve site directors, create guidelines and concepts regarding data management policies for NRS field sites, and develop consensus from individual sites regarding these policies Develop documentation and training materials for use at NRS field sites, and train scientists and data managers at field sites in the use of data management systems.
Travel to NRS field sites to install software solutions, consult on site-specific data management problems, and assess the state of current information management solutions used at field sites. This consultation includes assisting field site managers to develop proposals and install networking hardware to support improvements in hardware and software infrastructure at NRS field sites as well as consulting with field site managers and scientists regarding effective methods for compiling, managing, and processing data for inclusion in cross-site data management facilities
Employee Name : Manuel Minwary
Department: Biology Department – Natural Reserves
Work Location: UC Riverside
Working Title: UCNRS Network Manager
Job Description
My position as the Network Manager is to provide assistance to the UCNRS Information Manager and thus to the UCNRS reserve system throughout the state of California. The projects that my position handle encompasses advance network installation in remote locations as well as computer database, web programming and network support.
The first part of my position involves the planning and deployment of network infrastructures at a reserve. To provide a wide range of technical and consultative services in the design, acquisition, installation / configuration, operation and maintenance of networks. To provide expertise in wireless network RF and architectural protocols (i.e. point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, mesh), as well as data aspects of networks while working at different reserves. In addition, my job is to also serve in a project engineer/project manager capacity where I would design, implement, and document the procedures. The second part of the responsibilities of my position will be to serve in the capacity of Computer Resource Specialists. This include database design and management, web site design and programming, and server administrator and maintenance.
Statement of Work
Station Maintenance: This person will work in collaboration with the UC NRS reserve staff to oversee the maintenance of the southern stations automated weather-climate stations (listed below) at the following reserves: Boyd Deep Canyon, Burns Pinon, Dawson Los Monos Canyon, Elliott Chaparral, James San Jacinto, Motte Rimrock, Santa Cruz Island, Sedgwick, Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory, Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego, Stunt Ranch, Sweeney Granite Mountains, and the White Mountain Research Center. Many reserves have facilities available to overnight if necessary, which can be used by this individual at no cost. Scheduled visits should be submitted through the reserve RAMS application system (http://rams.ucnrs.org). In collaboration with the UC NRS reserve managers, this person will develop a maintenance visitation schedule (bi-annual visitation per station) to complete routine infrastructure maintenance, sensor audits, provide updates to metadata information to the Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine Team , and replace aging instrumentation when necessary. In the case of emergency repairs (e.g., communications/data stream issues, sensor failure), this person will work remotely with the UC NRS station managers to troubleshoot the issues without having to make a physical visit.
Data Management: Although the main QA/QC, data management, and web site management will be performed by the Ecoinformatics Engine team at Berkeley https://holos.berkeley.edu/, this position will check the data streaming on the website on a weekly basis and alert the Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine Team and the reserve staff if there appears to be a problem. They will also communicate with the Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine Team to confirm data transport especially after instrument maintenance.
Instrumentation: The basic life cycle of a typical stations’ instrumentation and electronics is in the range of 3-5 years. However, several site locations within the network are in extreme physical environments that tend to shorten the typical life cycle and will require additional attention by the on-site reserve staff to maintain the integrity of the basic station infrastructure and instrumentation beyond the scope of the proposed annual maintenance visitation carried out by this individual.
The UC NRS has a limited supply of replacement instrumentation and will be utilized as needed as replacement instrumentation for the network. If additional sensors or station infrastructure materials are needed, beyond the supply on hand, it will be the responsibility of the UC NRS System to purchase the appropriate instrumentation. This individual will provide any necessary guidance on ordering replacement instrumentation or assistance installing additional sensors if it fits within the annual maintenance visitation schedule.
Statement of Work
Station Maintenance: This person will work in collaboration with the UC NRS reserve staff to oversee the maintenance of the southern stations automated weather-climate stations (listed below) at the following reserves: Boyd Deep Canyon, Burns Pinon, Dawson Los Monos Canyon, Elliott Chaparral, James San Jacinto, Motte Rimrock, Santa Cruz Island, Sedgwick, Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory, Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego, Stunt Ranch, Sweeney Granite Mountains, and the White Mountain Research Center. Many reserves have facilities available to overnight if necessary, which can be used by this individual at no cost. Scheduled visits should be submitted through the reserve RAMS application system (http://rams.ucnrs.org). In collaboration with the UC NRS reserve managers, this person will develop a maintenance visitation schedule (bi-annual visitation per station) to complete routine infrastructure maintenance, sensor audits, provide updates to metadata information to the Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine Team , and replace aging instrumentation when necessary. In the case of emergency repairs (e.g., communications/data stream issues, sensor failure), this person will work remotely with the UC NRS station managers to troubleshoot the issues without having to make a physical visit.
Data Management: Although the main QA/QC, data management, and web site management will be performed by the Ecoinformatics Engine team at Berkeley https://holos.berkeley.edu/, this position will check the data streaming on the website on a weekly basis and alert the Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine Team and the reserve staff if there appears to be a problem. They will also communicate with the Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine Team to confirm data transport especially after instrument maintenance.
Instrumentation: The basic life cycle of a typical stations’ instrumentation and electronics is in the range of 3-5 years. However, several site locations within the network are in extreme physical environments that tend to shorten the typical life cycle and will require additional attention by the on-site reserve staff to maintain the integrity of the basic station infrastructure and instrumentation beyond the scope of the proposed annual maintenance visitation carried out by this individual.
The UC NRS has a limited supply of replacement instrumentation and will be utilized as needed as replacement instrumentation for the network. If additional sensors or station infrastructure materials are needed, beyond the supply on hand, it will be the responsibility of the UC NRS System to purchase the appropriate instrumentation. This individual will provide any necessary guidance on ordering replacement instrumentation or assistance installing additional sensors if it fits within the annual maintenance visitation schedule.
Collin Bode – Job Description
My work in the last three years supports research for the NSF-funded Eel River Critical Zone Observatory (ERCZO) at the Angelo Coast Range Reserve. I also assist UC Berkeley Reserves and recently the entire UC Natural Reserve System. As Data Manager for the ERCZO, my work interfaces field scientists (earth science, biology, climatology, and hydrology) with software engineering to provide informatics and data products in the areas of spatial analysis and time-series environmental monitoring.
I perform spatial analyses and create data products from LiDAR (point cloud, grid, and mesh) and existing GIS sources. I am coauthor on a paper on High Resolution Topography, which was the result of a LiDAR workshop exploring mass transfer and scaling issues with topographic scanning technologies. I tutor ERCZO graduate students interested in GIS, providing them with datasets, class recommendations, introduction to coding with Python, and assist them in applying GIS to their research. I manage an archive of flat-file datasets that are the product of individual researchers. I help students flesh out the metadata for their work to improve the longevity of the datasets. I perform quality assessments and develop data products for the ERCZO. Primary tools for this are Python and Jupyter notebook. I’ve developed two databases for the ERCZO project, “Eyes on the
Eel,” a quarterly multi-trophic level survey of the Eel River. One is an offline Filemaker database, the other is an online MySQL database, both using controlled vocabularies.
My informatics work revolves around wireless sensor observatories. At the Angelo Reserve, Peter Steel (Reserve Steward) and I maintain the wireless network we created. It has been in operation for 10 years with over 90% uptime. It provides access to our research sites, Rivendell and Sagehorn Ranch. We have 22 networked data loggers and over 1,000 sensors onsite. I maintain both the sensors and the network. This requires hiking to remote locations, arborist work, troubleshooting, and technology assessments. To manage all the data coming in, I co-developed the Berkeley Sensor Database with Ginger Ogle (retired). The system has half a billion records from 8 years of monitoring.
There has been a lot of interest by other groups (UCNRS, UCREC, OBFS, Pepperwood) interested in adopting my data management system. UCB Reserves, Sagehen Creek and Blue Oak Ranch currently use it. In 2016, I took over the management of the 27 UC Natural Reserve System weather stations, which requires close coordination with their field techs. I am migrating their data from an outside group to the Sensor Database and then to our new system, Dendra, with completion expected late 2018. Total records in our system are over 1 billion.
In 2016, I started a project, Dendra, to build a modern replacement for the Sensor Database. Dendra is a dendritic real-time cloud based time-series information management system. It has a modern micro-service architecture using Javascript, Node.js, Vue, Nginx, and two NoSQL databases: MongoDB and InfluxDB. Dendra is a collectively funded by the ERCZO, UCNRS, and a Moore Foundation project, CHI-FW. I am co-developing it with J. Scott Smith. To my knowledge there are no available public or commercial systems with comparable capabilities. Dendra is open source and currently in alpha.