NBII Partners With the National Climate Change Wildlife Science Center

USGS is taking the lead for DOI on selecting host institutions for these centers, and the NCCWSC will provide the initial staffing and start-up capabilities. The NCCWSC science agenda will focus on the linkage of global climate information with fundamental ecological knowledge, and the application of this understanding to the particular species, habitats, and ecosystems present in each region. The science to be conducted at these centers will be identified through a partnership steering committee in which Landscape Conservation Cooperatives and other management and science entities identify and prioritize key science needs to implement and monitor actions to adapt to climate change.

From February through July 2010, the NBII program dedicated one staff person, Viv Hutchison, to a full-time detail in the NCCWSC in Reston, VA. Viv’s role was to act as the lead for an NBII team of contributors in the development of several components of NCCWSC data management activities. The NBII planned and built an information-sharing portal that will be used for a variety of tasks, primarily to serve the needs of scientists by working to reduce the data management and administration required of modern science.

Features of the portal include a project registration wizard that allows scientists to register funded projects. The registration process results in a discovery-level metadata record, serving as a downloadable product the scientists can build on to develop a complete Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)-compliant metadata record before project close-out. Additionally, the portal will offer scientists collaboration space with discussion boards and document-sharing capabilities, and the ability to update Web pages about their project. Further, the portal will act as a gateway to national and regional datasets, in addition to NCCWSC funded datasets, downscaled climate models, and model outputs.

One of the important keys to the NCCWSC program is providing scientists the ability to find, access, and manipulate data in new ways that will foster innovative discoveries and/or develop models reflecting future climate change effects. Another result of the NBII staff detail to NCCWSC was the outline of a high-level system architecture design from which the program can build a data network. This document can be used as a foundation for the NCCWSC program as it moves forward in building a data-management program incorporating such technologies as Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services (THREDDS) servers (middleware product that forms a bridge between data providers and users), and customized tools for accessing large data models.

In the coming months, the NBII will host the NCCWSC information-sharing portal.