Data management in a large, international, multidisciplinary

Antarctic project

Antonio Quesada (UAM)

Oscar Bermudez and Antonio Barragán (CNDP)

The project

Byers Peninsula. International Site of Reference for Coastal and Terrestrial/Limnetic ecosystems studies. An initiative within the IPY

Aims

• Byers Peninsula. International Site of Reference for Coastal and Terrestrial/Limnetic ecosystems studies

• Obtaining the maximum reference information as possible in one of the zones in the globe where climate change is affecting more

Development

• Over 30 scientists: 13 countries, 26 institutions

• Environment protection= Groups of 5-6 people in short periods of 2-3 weeks during the development of the project

• Multidisciplinary groups

Funding peculiarites

• Spanish project, facilitating all the logistics, and parts of the general equipment and consumables

• Every participant responsible of finding his/her travelling and science money

• Many different institutions funded the individual projects

Holocene changes in the climatic conditions

•

Limnology of the area

Microbiological studies

Ornithological diversity, health and tourism stress

Elephant seals population

Biocomplexity and life cycles

Vegetation studies

Study the functioning of a complete watershed unit

Carbon and nutrient budget at watershed level

Environmental impact of the researchers

Freshwater diving activity

Data management

• Spanish legislation makes mandatory to build metadata of all scientific activity developed within the Spanish Antarctic Program, and deposit the raw data in a data repository

• IPY Data requirements

• For fulfilling the law the CNDP produced an English interface for metadata creation via internet

Data Center as a tool for research

• Project Portal: bibliography, picture repository, scientific output….

• GIS interface to download layers of activity – Some with only positions others with data – Layers will cover:

• Limnology

• Vegetation

• Microbiology

• Fauna

• Geology

• and as many as needed

Problems found on management

• Non-Antarctic researchers very sceptical (not used to this)

• Heterogeneity of data, from gen sequences to pictures or meteorological data

• Period of data availability, some data are obtained immediately (instrument downloads), some others may take years, Period of Open Access??????

• Patenting and data ownership in different countries under different laws and procedures

Solution