Acquisition, Analysis and Application of Climate Data

1. Acquisition, Analysis and Application of Climate Data John Gross, I&M Ft Collins Lisa Nelson, GIS group, NPS partner Greg Hill, NPClime developer, NPS partner Brent Frakes, Data Manager (and climate geek), ROMN GIS / Data Management Conference, Ft Collins, Colorado, 1-3 April, 2008

2. NPClime – Climate data for Parks John Gross, Greg Hill, Lisa Nelson, Ed Debevec, Grant Kelly, Kelly Redmond, Greg McCurdy GIS / Data Management Conference 2 April 2008

3. Road Map Project rationale and goals Phased development and status Current activities / focus Future plans

4. Motivation for NPClime • Climate data key ecological driver • Common data needs across parks & networks • Leverage expertise • Simplify reporting process • Reduce time and cost

5. NPClime goals The long-term goal of NPClime is to provide tools to discover and use climate data for routine needs and for sophisticated analyses. • Data discovery • Data acquisition • Data summaries and simple analyses • Graphics suitable for reports

6. More specific objectives • Comprehensive inventory of climate stations • Web-based data discovery and acquisition • Simplified access to most useful data sources • General approach to data analyses • Streamlined reporting process • General solution to QA/QC and data management

7. 3 Phases of NPClime • 1. Inventory stations & acquire metadata • 2. Data access, analysis, and reporting • Long-term data management: Ingest, QA/QC, archiving, etc.

8. Phase 1 - Station and metadata inventory • 32 inventory reports published in the NRTR series • Station metadata archived in ACIS dbase (ACIS = Applied Climate Information System)

9. Climate Inventory Reports • Climate monitoring and climate background • Methods and results • Conclusions and recommendations • Appendices • Monitoring principles • Monitoring design considerations • Climate monitoring networks • Electronic supplements

10. Phase 2 – Web-based access to data and products • Close collaboration with WRCC • Reliance on ACIS • ACIS - Applied Climate Information System • Collaboratively developed by Regional Climate Centers • Data ingestion, archiving, data products

11. NPClime Application User Interface 3-tiered design Backend Services (Business layer) Data and station metadata (ACIS)

12. NPClime system design ACIS Data products Data or data products User interface QA/QC data ACIS metadata Data access via web services User station ID Raw data Analysis engine (R, code, etc) WRCC - ACIS Development and hosting NPS Development and hosting

13. Status and accomplishments • NPClime is up!http://www1.nrintra.nps.gov/NPClime/ • Basic functionality in place • ACIS interface improvements / embellishments • R interface architecture and basic functions implemented • Infrastructure & support • Advisory Committee • Draft template reports

14. On-going efforts • Application development – Greg Hill and Lisa Nelson • Continuous enhancements to ACIS • New data sources, interface and functions • Climate data analysis and reporting • Content • Steve Gray (GRYN) • Tim Kittel (U Colo, INSTAAR), Brent Frakes • Templates for reports • Automated analyses and plots • Development of R code

15. Programmatic benefits • Web-based data linkages • Generalized data reporting via the R language • Powerful statistical & graphics language • Open-source & extensible • Integration / testing of IRMA services • Goal: • Integrate NPS software developments into ACIS • Remove NPS from climate data mgmt business

16. Phase 3 – What’s coming • Access to additional climate networks • Application development – robustness, embellishments • Increased ingest of NPS data • QA / QC • Long-term data management / archiving strategy • Finalize reporting and analysis functions • SOP-like documentation

17. Summary • Inventories complete • NPClime up and running (but under development) • General architecture for analyses / graphics • Additional guidance or reporting underway Check it out! http://www1.nrintra.nps.gov/NPClime