1 Harvesting Information to Sustain our Forests: Creating an Adaptive Management Portal NSF DIGITAL GOVERNMENT PROGRAM August 2000 Tim Tolle & Lois Delcambre Co-Project Directors

2

3

4 Adaptive Management Area Locations Click on the map or the name for a description and a location map. Ba Ba Adaptive Management Areas

5 Internet Issues Unable to access all sites concurrently Search engines frequently “miss” relevant sites No reliable determination of quality of information Non-discriminating and numerous “hits” with traditional search engines

6 So… Eric Landis – vision of access to forest information portal Craig Palmer – NSF Digital Government Call for Proposals Oregon Graduate Institute – marketing and computer science expertise – partner for Digital Government Proposal

7 a value-added, Internet-based service Adaptive Management Portal: a value-added, Internet-based service Provide multiple access paths to underlying forest-related information. Preserve local autonomy and local focus of each site. Support diverse users and diverse types of information.

8 Project Specifics Duration: 3 years Budget: $1.5 million Principal financial sponsors National Science Foundation Forest Service (R-6 and PNW Station) National Park Service (Western Region) Bureau of Land Management (Oregon State Office)

9 Participants: Adaptive Management Areas (FS, BLM, FWS field units) Rainier National Park Oregon Graduate Institute (CS, ES, MS departments) Forest Service (Northwest Region) University of Nevada, Las Vegas

10 Principal Team Members Tim Tolle Regional Coordinator for AMA, US Forest Service Eric Landis Forest Information System Specialist, Consultant Craig Palmer Natural Resources Monitoring Expert, UNLV Fred Phillips Professor and Head, Mgt. of Science and Tech., OGI Patty Toccalino Asst. Prof., Environmental Science and Eng., OGI Lois Delcambre Professor, Computer Science and Eng., OGI David Maier Professor, Computer Science and Eng., OGI Shawn Bowers PhD Student, Computer Science and Eng., OGI Mat Weaver PhD Student, Computer Science and Eng., OGI Forest/environmental expertise Computer science expertise

11 Staff Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Mark Whiting Science Advisor, USDI, National Park Service Regina Rochefort Communications Director, USDA Forest Service, PNW Research Station Cynthia L. Miner Chief, Office of Technical Support, Forest Resources, USDI Fish and Wildlife Service Monty Knudsen Executive Director, IMFN Secretariat Fred Johnson MD, Asst. Professor, Division of Medical Informatics and Outcomes Research, OHSU Paul Gorman Sustainable Northwest Martin Goebel USDA Forest Service, Ecosystem Management Steve Solem President, IUFRO, Oxford Forestry Institute, Dept of Plant Sciences Jeff Burley Co-Inventor of the Topic Map Model Michel Biezunski Advisory Board Forest/env. expertise Computer science expertise

12 Adaptive Management Portal System Description An Internet-based catalogue, access, and retrieval system with dedicated service for Adaptive Management Area- generated information.

13 Provides Concurrent Searching to Multiple Content, Formats and Autonomous Sites ? AMA 1 AMA 2 AMA 4 AMA 3 AMA 6 AMA 5

14 Adaptive Management Portal Key Elements Collection Policy Standardized Meta-information Fields; use of controlled vocabularies User-friendly Interface Compatible with AMA resources

15 Adaptive Management Portal Collection Policy Provides guidance on the type of information which should be included as a part of the system. Typically includes:  Types of eligible information resources  Format for meta-information (catalogue)  Quality of eligible information resources  Conditions for entering meta-information

16 Adaptive Management Portal Meta-information Necessary auxiliary information needed to understand, locate, and search for information.

17 Basic Meta-information Fields Title Author or Creator Subject & Key Words Abstract or Other Text Description Publisher (or AMA) Date Made Available Type (e.g. Paper, WWW Page, Dictionary) Format (e.g. Map, Text) Resource Identifier (E.G. ISBN, URL) Source (If Not Original) Language Relation (Conference, Compendium) Coverage (Spatial and Temporal) Rights (Copyright Notice)

18 Controlled Vocabularies and Thesaurii Use common terms – for metadata & searching Existing standards:  Integrated Taxonomic Information System  California Environmental Resources Evaluation System  National Vegetation Classification Standard  USFS Natural Resource Inventory Glossary  NBII/FGDC

19 Adaptive Management Portal Technical Objectives Provide easy access to a distributed network Provide for local autonomy Provide a scalable system Provide an extensible design Explore and identify the use of controlled vocabularies Explore the capability for user-supplied annotations and structure

20 Research: Use “Digital Duct Tape” 1992 bird sightings at National Park 1995 migration patterns of two particular species (painstakingly identified species for bird sightings) study 2000 you need a survey of all species - for a biodiversity study the classification of the species of the bird sightings are gone!

21 Goal: Reuse Human Attention The original bird sightings Two species identified (pink & black)

22 Goal: Reuse Human Attention Black bird sightings Pink bird sightings Other species

23 When you can’t modify the base data: use superimposed information Two species identified (pink & black) pink birds black birds

24 Superimposed Information SuperimposedLayer BaseLayer Information Source 1 Information Source 2 Information Source n … marks

25 SLIMPad a superimposed application… …using superimposed information developed for a related research project at OGI may be applicable to gathering and organizing information

26 Work Plan 4. Architect and scale the information portal technology 2. Articulate and evolve the requirements for the system 5. Experimentally deploy the technology at AMA sites 3.Conceptually develop the information portal technology Major influence Iterative influence 6. Evaluate the Project opportunities 1. Understand the customer requirements and

27 Task 1 – Status Snoqualmie Pass Adaptive Management Area, Cle Elum, WA (June and July) Interviews with Forest Service Corvallis Forest Sciences Lab and USGS FRESC, Corvallis ( August) Interviews with Central Cascades Adaptive Management Area, Eugene (August) Interviews with the Applegate Partnership and its associated agencies (August) Rainier National Park (planned for October)

28 Questions for the perspective users What kind of information would you want? What kind of information will you provide? What kind of “meta-information” is needed? Which terminology do you use? Do you use special semantics?

29 Questions for the prospective organizations What should the collection policy be? What training is needed? For whom? What are the organization’s financial and funding capabilities? Who does data management? What expertise is available (including time)? What resource equipment is required? Available? Who are the customers? Why?

30 Things learned from Task 1 work is project-based primary product is information: assessments, studies, surveys, environmental impact statements multiple agencies are involved each agency serves as information gatherer; information broker; information consumer even though information is a primary product, information technology is secondary (stewardship of the land is the primary mission)

31 Responses to Technical Questions What kind of information would you want? What kind of information will you provide? What kind of “meta-information” is needed? Which terminology do you use? Do you use special semantics?

32 Responses to questions of the organizations What should the collection policy be? What training is needed? For whom? What are the organization’s financial and funding capabilities? Who does data management? What expertise is available (including time)? What resource equipment is required? Available? Who are the customers? Why?

33

34

35

36

37

38 Three Basic Types of Mappings Model 1 Schema 1 Instances 1 SourceTarget Mapped Converted Mapped Converted Mapped Converted Inter-Model Inter-Schema Model-to- Schema Model 2 Schema 1 Instances 1 Model 1 Schema 1 Instances 1 Model 1 Schema 1 Instances 1 Model 1 Schema 2 Instances 1 Model 2 Schema 2 Instances