DIREnet Informatics

1
Coordinating Studies on Southwest Forests
Woodlands
Neil Cobb, Merriam-Powell Center for
Environmental Research, Northern Arizona
University, Flagstaff, AZ and Eck Doerry,
Department of Computer Science, Northern Arizona
University, Flagstaff, AZ
Extending the Network
Summary
Although our network emerged from a need to
understand an extreme event that is regionally
resetting major ecosystem types, the potential
for DIREnet easily extends to other complementary
themes and programs (Figure 5) including 1) an
examination of drought as a special case of
extreme events (Gutshick BassiriRad 2003), 2) a
global perspective on drought impacts (Kogan
1997), 3) the major environmental challenges
suggested by the national Research Council for
NEON (Tilman et al 2003), and associated work on
climate change (CLIMAS), and 4) the socioeconomic
implications of drought (Swetnam et al in prep).
A severe regional drought that began in the late
1990s rapidly and dramatically altered
southwestern forest and woodland ecosystems (Fig.
1). The drought became a catalyst, bringing
researchers and land managers together to
consider a long-term strategy to understand the
drought in light of global climate change. The
result of these interactions was the Drought
Impacts on Regional Ecosystems Network (DIREnet).
The network consists of 45 core participants
from 24 institutions and coordinates studies on
drought impacts on forest and woodlands of the
Southwest. It also seeks to understand the role
of climate change in mediating such extreme
events. DIREnet will promote specific research
questions and collaborations that could not be
addressed without such pan-regional coordination.
An example of promoting collaborations is a
recent study documenting the impacts of the
drought and ensuing bark-beetle outbreaks, and
proposing a linkage to climate change (Breshears
et al 2005). This is an important study that
documents the extent (Fig. 1) and intensity (Fig.
2) of a major drought that was hotter than past
droughts and may be one of the first documented
global change droughts.
Utah
Colorado
Figure 5. Extensions of network activities
NEON
The success of DIREnet will in large part be
measured by our ability to foresee and make
connections with other networks and programs.
For example, how well would the proposed NEON
climate domains help us document the ecological
impacts of this or future droughts. Figure 6
shows that the Rocky Mountain-Colorado Plateau
(Domain 13) contained the vast majority of the
mortality observed in southwestern forests and
woodlands. Thus, if NEON infrastructure had been
dispersed across three fixed platforms and one
mobile platform, it would have greatly aided our
ability to understand the processes and document
the patterns of the drought-related mortality
across the region and over different time scales.
The drought and its relationship with climate
change should be used as a model in developing
NEON infrastructure and determining its
deployment.
Breshears, D.D., N.S. Cobb, P.M. Rich, K.P.
Price, C.D. Allen, R.G. Balice, W.H. Romme, J.H.
Kastens, M.L. Floyd, J. Belnap, J.J. Anderson,
O.B. Myers, and C.W. Meyer. 2005. Regional
vegetation die-off in response to global-change
type drought. (In Press, Proceedings of National
Academy of Sciences USA).
New Mexico
Arizona
Ponderosa Pine Mortality
Pinyon Pine Mortality
The overall plan for the network is illustrated
in Figure 3. The network activities include
identifying research themes, targeting funding
opportunities and products, developing a
coordination plan that includes a powerful online
research forum, and the development of education
(Figure 4) and outreach efforts.
Figure 1. Distribution of Tree Mortality
Figure 6. Distribution of tree mortality in
relation to NEON climate domains. Arrows show
mortality across the Rocky Mtns-Colorado Plateau
(Domain 13) and the Great Basin (Domain 15).
Core Network Participants
Principle Investigators Neil Cobb, Northern
Arizona U. Eck
Doerry, Northern Arizona U. Core Participants
(Steering Committee) Craig Allen, USGS/Bandelier
NP Mike Allen, U.
California-Riverside Bill Romme, Colorado State
University Julio Betancourt,
USGS/U of Arizona David D. Breshears, University
of Arizona Scott Collins, UNM/
Sevilleta LTER Lisa Floyd, Prescott College
Vince Gutshick, New
Mexico State U. Jeff Mitton, UC-Boulder
Eugene Schupp,
Utah State U. Tom Swetnam, U of Arizona
Robin Tausch, USFS-Rocky
Mtn. Res. Sta. Core Participants Scott Anderson,
Northern Arizona U. John
Bailey, Northern Arizona U. Jarret Barber,
Montana State University Karen
Eisenhart, U. of Colorado Catherine Gehring,
Northern Arizona U. Bruce
Hungate, Northern Arizona U. George Koch,
Northern Arizona U. Tom
Kolb, Northern Arizona U. Joel McMillin, USFS
FHM Arizona Mark Miller,
USGS, CPFS Margaret Moore, Northern Arizona U.
Esteban Muldavin, U. New
Mexico Tomoe Natori, Dine College
Jose Negron, USFS-Forest
Health Colorado Kiona Ogle, Montana State
University Catherine Ortega,
Fort Lewis College John Prather, Northern Arizona
U. Deana Pennington,
LTER Network Office Paul M. Rich, Los Alamos
National Lab Christine Turner,
USGS Pete Fule, Northern Arizona University
Tom Sisk, Northern Arizona U Tad
Theimer, Northern Arizona U.
Phillip vanMantgem, USGS Thomas Whitham,
Northern Arizona U. Yaguang Xu,
Northern Arizona U.
DIREnet Informatics
The Southwest Ecological Research Forum (SERF)
exploring a novel informatics metaphor
Motivations

• Conventional community websites are often just
  passive data warehouses ? hard to search, weak
  metadata, quickly outdated.
• Most of scientific action analysis,
  discussion, collaboration happens off-line.
• Drinking from a firehose scientists need more
  help indexing, organizing, and staying aware of
  ongoing developments in a data-rich world.

Figure 2. Rapid conversion of Pinyon-Juniper
Woodland to Juniper Woodland, resulting from
drought followed by Pinyon-specific bark beetle
outbreak
SERF Design Goals

• Complete, extensible data archive for DIRENET
  community.
• Interactive Community Authentication,
  user-customizable tools/interfaces, access
  control
• Powerful tools for online collaboration and data
  awareness
• Bring not just research data, but also
  scientific interaction within the community
  online in a virtual lab space!

Key Hypotheses
1) Spatial and temporal climate variability
(Comrie et al. 1998) correlate with tree
mortality (Logan Powell 2001), fire (Swetnam
Betancourt 1992) and ecosystem productivity
across the region (Allen et al. 1998) 2)
Northern populations of Southwest tree species
will experience less drought stress and hence
less selection for drought tolerance 3)
Evolutionary paths will be redirected. There is
evidence that extreme events such as these
droughts exert the major selection pressures
(Gutschick BassiriRad 2003) and may explain
diverse patterns of trait associations 4)
Drought tree mortality will greatly alter fire
regimes across the region in complex ways 5)
Consequences of the death and changing
distributions of dominant trees will be
community-wide (Whitham et al. 2003). For
example, with over 1000 species dependent upon
pinyon pine (Brown et al. 2001), drought will
affect diverse taxa from microbes to vertebrates
and only a coordinated network can bring the
findings of such diverse taxa and disciplines
together 6) Ecosystems will be completely
transformed (versus intact ecosystems moving
upwards along gradients of temperature and
precipitation) (Scheffer et al. 2001) 7)
Invasive species will expand across the region as
a result of wide-scale disturbance and 8) The
recovery phase is prolonged and may account for
major effects on inclusive fitness (Gutschick
BassiriRad 2003), thus, it is imperative to
follow the patterns of resource use, growth,
development, and reproduction over long periods
and diverse geographic locations, by coordinating
research of many groups and institutions.
SERF Features

• Dynamic, customized interface. Users have
  access to differing data and operations depending
  on identity.
• Secure user data upload and sharing.
• User curation. Users have control over their
  own data and records ? easy editing and full
  control over access/sharing.
• Powerful search mechanisms Search across
  datasets create and download virtual datasets
  drawn from such searches.
• Data-connected discussion forums Authorized
  users contribute to discussion forums attached
  to specific datasets.
• Interconnection with Grid Ultimate goal is to
  allow searches spanning datasets in SERF and
  other Grid sources.
• Data Awareness SERF users can request
  notification when specific kinds of datasets/data
  types are added to SERF.
• E-Notebook SERF Users can bookmark and annotate
  search results, data records, and other SERF
  contents in an online notebook.

Figure 3. Functions of the Network
Progress to date

• Core SERF infrastructure created and installed.
• People, Pubs, and Labs modules complete and
  being populated.
• Search and virtual result set download tools
  complete.
• Several research data sets (climatology)
  installed.
• Prototypes of data uploading mechanisms.

Figure 4. Website of Graduate Class dedicated to
understanding ecological impacts of climate change