Network Information System

The LTER Network Information System (NIS) exposes and merges heterogeneous data from the 26 LTER sites into a standard format available for the Network and broader community to perform synthetic analysis. The development of the NIS is guided by the Network Information System Advisory Committee (NISAC) and the NIS Strategic Plan. [see details]

PASTA

The Provenance Aware Synthesis Tracking Architecture (PASTA) is the foundation of the Network Information System. The PASTA infrastructure is built upon standards already embraced by the LTER community, such as the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) and the Metacat XML database, and utilizes advanced data warehousing techniques to allow semantic mediation of heterogeneous data into a community accessible derived product that can be analyzed as a standard data type. PASTA eliminates the need to perform ad-hoc data conversion for Network-level data, and simplifies both data acquisition and assimilation into analytical work flow systems. [see details]

EcoTrends

The EcoTrends project was established in 2004 to support the collection and analysis of long-term ecological data from approximately fifty state and federally funded programs, including all 26 LTER sites and others funded by the USDA Agriculture Research Service (ARS), USDA Forest Service, US Department of Energy, US Geological Survey (USGS) and numerous universities. Web-based access to derived data products is through an "exploratory data portal" (http://www.EcoTrends.info), which provides users with discovery, plotting, and download functions. The portal is a collaboration between the Jornada LTER and the LTER Network Office. The EcoTrends data infrastructure is based on the PASTA framework. [see details]

Data Access Server

The Data Access Server project is prototyping the use of a proxy server to monitor and supervise public access to LTER data, thereby providing a single-point service for compliance to the LTER Data Access Policy. The proxy server, named the Data Access Server (DAS), uses shadow referencing to limit direct access to LTER data by exposing only controlled data links to the general public, who must first register and accept the LTER Data Policy before access to data is allowed. [see details]