Community Newsletter
Volume I, Number 9, February 2005

Contents

Reminder: The deadline date for submitting proposals to the Unidata Equipment Award RFP is March 18, 2005. Proposals for amounts ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 will be considered. View the Call for Proposals here. View excellent, successful proposals here and here.

 

CUAHSI's Hydrologic Observatories

Guided by its strategic plan, Unidata is in the process of broadening its core community to include disciplines aligned with, but outside of, its core community. The hydrology community was a natural step. Hydrologists now participate actively in the Unidata enterprise, and UPC staff are involved in that community's activities as well.

Hydrologic Observatories, a research concept under development by the Consortium for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI), will facilitate the exploration of all interfaces in the hydrologic cycle, including land-surface/atmosphere and interactions between local and regional groundwater systems. Coherent multi-scale data, including physical, chemical and biological measurements will be developed to characterize the stores, fluxes, flowpaths and residence time distributions of water, sediment, nutrients, and contaminants within the observatories.

Each observatory will cover an approximately 10,000 square km river basin area. The instrumentation will be designed to facilitate exploration of all of the area's physical interfaces and will provide long term observations of hydrologic parameters in a controlled environment.CUAHSI will establish and maintain a set of Long-Term Hydrologic Observatories at which research can be conducted on pressing hydrologic problems by using data generated by CUAHSI as well as by other entities in the environs of the observatories. Observatories will be selected on the basis of their regional representation and their viability as laboratories to study particular subsets of hydrologic problems from the master list, and data networks will be designed and implemented to study these problems. However, basic networks at each of the observatories will be implemented to assure that cross-laboratory syntheses can be conducted.

Announcement of an NSF solicitation to fund the activity is projected for summer 2005 with selection of two HO's by October 2005. From 2008 to 2010 one additional HO a year will be funded, resulting in a pilot network of five by 2011.

For more detailed information about Hydrologic Laboratories, visit CUAHSI's home page and click on Hydrologic Observatory Information.

CUAHSI is a consortium of research universities, affiliate members, and international affiliates that aims for cross-cutting research that has both science and societal components. CUAHSI's development evolved from a need for the hydrology community to do larger-scale, longer-term research at the boundaries of a number of disciplines.

Meet Unidata's Web Development Group

Considering its size, Unidata's web development group packs a serious wallop. The three group members (full-time equivalent of approximately 1.5): Jennifer Oxelson, Joanne Graham, and Jeff McWhirter are working diligently to move Unidata's web presence from Version 1 to Version 2.

Jennifer Oxelson, (pictured at right) the principal web developer, is new to Unidata, but not new to the UCAR family. She came to the program center from NCAR where she worked for the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group (ESIG, now ISSE), the Atmospheric Technology Division (now EOL), and for the HIAPER project office. Jen saw the position in Unidata as an excellent opportunity to use her engineering skills to transition the architecture of our site from a functional, but very limited prototype, to a design that can withstand the test of time and technology.

Other members of the web team are Joanne Graham (pictured left), project manager and Jeff McWhirter, technical liaison. Joanne’s primary role is that of Unidata program administrator, while Jeff’s primary assignment is as one of two Integrated Data Viewer developers. (Jeff is shown on the right, below)

So what can you expect from Version 2 of the Unidata website: big changes under the hood, a new aesthetic design, and some new functionality around support and mailing lists. Before we deploy Version 2, we will be asking our registered community members to come to our site to update their information. Your help with this will be greatly appreciated and will facilitate your transition to the new site. Stay tuned for the transition announcement this coming summer.

The long-term plan is for Version 2 to lay the foundation for more community interaction, communication, and available functionality.. We hope that you will like what you see. If you ever have questions, comments, or concerns about our website, we hope you will contact us at: plaza@unidata.ucar.edu.

Hello Community? It's the Users Committee on the Phone.

The Unidata Users Committee has questions and hopes you have answers. In an effort to keep its finger on the community's collective pulse, each Users Committee member has been contacting several sites prior to the semiannual committee meetings. Thus far over forty sites have been contacted. If you or a colleague at your site has already responded, we take this opportunity to thank you for participating. Together with the input of others, the information you provided will help formulate policy and monetary decisions. If, on the other hand, you have not been contacted, we hope you'll welcome a chance to talk with a Users Committee representative when the call comes in. Please contact a committee member directly to provide your comments if that seems to be an option for you.

Software and Support Updates

GEMPAK. A prototype which creates an end-to-end IT framework, that includes cataloging, remote access via standard protocols, and visualization is being developed using GEMPAK programs. The project serves to illustrate techniques that will be valuable to the LEAD project. GEMPAK programs determine the Region of Interest (ROI) using NAM/ETA 12km grids from the IDD, and radar floater composites are generated for the model domain for the forecast period. Steve Chiswell has provided a more detailed description of the process of choosing the ROI and running the model.
LEAD. The LEAD team has identified two key decision points that have stymied forward progress on the prototype sequence. Two Tiger teams have been formed, the first of which has come to consensus and offered its solution to the decision point regarding finding LEAD resources available to a given use and the second of which is working to devise a security scheme that LEAD will use going forward.
NetCDF: A new release, netCDF-3.6.0-p1 which fixes a potentially serious bug in version 3.6.0 is now available. NetCDF version 3.6 improves large file support, Windows compatibility, ease of installation, and performance using the Fortran-90 interface. Links to documentation, including installation instructions, are available.
Support. Evaluation of tracking systems for use in providing Unidata user support continues with the installation and internal evaluation of another third-party help desk package.

Contact: support@unidata.ucar.edu for assistance with your software or questions or subscribe to an e-mail list to learn more about the software packages that you use or those you would like to learn more about.

Send comments to info@unidata.ucar.edu.

Unidata is sponsored by the National Science Foundation