Palmer LTER Information Management

Each LTER site has an Information Manager (IM) to assist researchers in collecting, processing, documenting and archiving data.  IMs also typically assist with website management, communications, and other tasks.  In addition, the IM is available to help students and scientists develop new datasets by recommending community standards and best practices for formatting their data for widest possible usage.

The lead Information Manager (IM) at PAL is currently Sage Lichtenwalner, who is based at Rutgers University.  The lead IM ensures the project adheres to the data and information management guidelines, best-practices, and policies set forth by NSF and the LTER community

The PAL M function includes four core tasks: 1) managing the PAL website, 2) maintaining the team database, 3) managing the publication database, and 4) overseeing data management for the project.  Each of these are described below.

Data Archiving 

As a Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) site, Palmer LTER collects biological, physical, and chemical data along the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) to understand how the Palmer Station region ecological systems function and change over time.  To support this research, PAL maintains several long-term and several shorter experimental datasets in our archive.

In keeping with LTER recommendations, we generally release all datasets as Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY), to facilitate collaboration with and usage by other researchers and educators.  (See our data policy.)  Our goal is to release all datasets within 2 years of collection or sample processing.  We are continually refining our core data management workflows to facilize data processing, quality control and archiving. Each research group is responsible for maintaining an archive of raw datasets, while most processed and derived datasets are published in the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) data portal.  We have transition to using the new EDI ezEML interface to streamline metadata management.  For more information, please see Data Management.

PAL researchers and students who are working on Palmer related datasets should contact the IM for guidance on data and metadata standards, tools, and data formats for archiving LTER data in keeping with LTER and NSF requirements.

People Database

The PAL Information Manager maintains an offline historical database of team members.  This database is synchronized regularly with the PAL website, LTER Network Office directory, our team Slack channel, and our team mailing lists. 

We currently have 4 email lists to facilitate communications among various groups, including

  • PAL PIs
  • Students
  • All active team members
  • And our larger PAL “team and friends” community

As people join the project, please send their name, contact information, and a photo to the Information Manager.  Also please let the IM know when people change roles, leave, or graduate from the project so we can keep our records up to date.

Publications

Our journal database is maintained in Zotero, and currently includes over 700 entries.  We include all peer reviewed articles and conference papers from PAL scientist and students.  In addition, the database includes student theses, and related articles of interest to the PAL community.  A searchable web interface is available on our website.  PAL-specific articles are tagged by each research group for easy filtering.

If you have an article to add, please send a citation (with DOI) to the Information Manager.

Website

The PAL website is maintained by the PAL IM.  It includes a team directory, an overview page for each research group, searchable listings of PAL datasets and publications, education & outreach resources, and a blog area for community news.

If you have any news or content to add to the website, please contact the Information Manager.

Additional IM resources from the LTER Network