[HubbardBrookCOS] COS minutes January 6-7 2015: grad student list, social media, HBRF, Best Practices, Archive, Changes to Cooperators Meeting, SCC election

Ruth D Yanai rdyanai at syr.edu
Sat Mar 7 15:03:47 EST 2015


People are asking about the next meeting on Tuesday, April 7.  John Battles is organizing topics related to W5, and 1.5 hours will be devoted to the LTER renewal.  An agenda will be circulated separately.

Sorry for the delay on these minutes.  They are still incomplete but here is what I have now—there is a lot.

January 7, 2015
COS Topics in COS meeting (Wednesday afternoon)

Grad Students and Social Media (Rebecca Sanders-DeMott)

Grad student list
Please visit this google doc to update the graduate student roster:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VBaYO-HoFUYDKIhzAlmDdR2t29fE2eMQLq3lThBDCN0/edit?usp=sharing

Social Media Outreach Initiative
We are beginning accounts on the following services:
•      Twitter: @HubbardBrook
•      Instagram: @HubbardBrook
•      Facebook: Hubbard Brook Research Foundation
Twitter is the most used by the scientific community and we will mainly be focusing on that.  Sarah and Rebecca will control the content by “retweeting” posts that are shared with a Hubbard Brook specific hashtag.  This will enable anyone involved in Hubbard Brook to share content and have it screened by Rebecca and Sarah
Material that we are looking to post is:
•      Photos from the field: close observations, landscape views, action shots of field work
•      Videos: capture field work and/or personalities of researchers
•      Blog posts from the Hubbard Brook community
•      Links to journal articles recently published
•      Links to media coverage related to Hubbard Brook
•      Announcements about Hubbard Brook-related events

To contribute content, if you have a Twitter account, post and include #hubbardbrookscience (they will search here for content--#hubbardbrook has already been used).
If not, send email to rsdemott at bu.edu<mailto:rsdemott at bu.edu> or sarahgarlick at gmail.com and Rebecca or Sarah will post
We will be sending follow-up information with specifics once we launch the site.

Related topic:
What is the best way for us to share publications and funding news?
We should have some standardized subject lines with email to the cos list.  Mary will update the HB list based on these emails.  You can find the complete publication list on the internet.  Mary will send us some suggestions for how to manage our pdfs locally.  She, Lindsey, and anyone else interested will be developing categories and subject lines.

HBRF report (David)
Policy and (ask David for his report for the minutes)
Forest Science Dialogs is entering its second year, led by Sarah Garlick.
David will be helping NSRC engage stakeholders, including funded scientists.
ScienceLinks is working with Nick and the bird teams.
Next will be winter climate change or the Science Policy Exchange.
Facilities:  Beds are filling up fast.  Contact Anthea now if you need housing.
We are talking about a comprehensive proposal for facilities development.  THere could be a new archive building, weirs and roads, meeting space, housing, tent platforms, energy efficiency upgrades, including solar installation.  Geoff Wilson will take the lead, but we will be looking for PI involvement.  Contact David if you are interested in getting involved.  November NSF deadline.

Best Practices in Long-Term Ecological Records (John B. and John C.) 1:34
Changes to the long-term hydrometeorological record
•  Questioning past practices.  We use corrections to the theoretical curve at low flows.  They don’t make much difference (up to 0.5% of annual flow, at the watershed where corrections apply at the highest flow).
• Errors in the instantaneous streamflow record, associated with timing, drift, and outliers.  It’s time consuming to correct these when it means going back to the paper charts.  This is going to take some time.
• Transition in sensors from analog to digital collection of air temperature, precipitation and streamflow.  We have a few years of overlap now, and some will require correction.  For example, air temperature varies with shielding of the sensor.  There are also issues with how gaps will be filled; with the strip charts, overlaying a chart from another stream.
• Better ways of doing things:  Thiesson polygons were a good way to interpolate between rain gages without a computer.  Watershed area was done with a traverse, now we have DEM elevation.  Should we estimate uncertainty in watershed area?
Best Practices
•  Balance between continuity and improvement
• Overlap is important when changing methods.
• Save the original data.  Reproducibility
• Seek input from all of you and inform people of the change
• Document the change.  Amey is working on a   (3 GTRs under development)

Discussion
Scott:  How do we know whether new is improved?  The LIDAR is a good example of that.
For the rating curve, we should revisit these with field measurements.  The important correction would be at high flow.
Charley:  Are we consistent with other best practices?  Sensor change and weather data are a common issue.  USGS, USFS, National Weather Service.
Ruth:  Best Practices in updating a long-term data set (which could be a lofty goal in the LTER renewal) is different from Best Practices in data collection (very common issue).
Lindsey:  People have cheap and widely distributed sampling
Ivan:  Documenting how HB handles our errors would be easier than proposing the Best way.

John Battles, field data collection, where the sensors are undergraduates.
(ask John for his slides).  We have new, untrained undergrads every year; we are not FIA.
1. Doing it the same way every time has value, even if you recognize that there is a bias.
2. Check whenever possible, even though it’s extra work and you don’t want to get a bad answer.
Overlap between the old and the new is relevant to researchers, not just instruments.
Efficiency:  Is a 3-person team 50% more efficient than a 2-person team?  Take tree heights in the leaf-off season
3.  Willingness to evaluate and improve analyses.  Whittaker used log-log regressions, which is not ideal now.
At Hubbard Brook, we update our DBH-height equations.
4.  Quantifying uncertainty helps identify the value of various improvements.  Report uncertainty.
We have a decision tree now for missing trees; was it missing last time?  Is it on the ground?  Is it on the edge?
5.  Respond carefully to changes in the system.  For example, beech bark disease affects diameter measurements (by 1%).
Curation: We go through a lot of data manipulation.  We need to document all the steps in the workflow.  Archive your R scripts.

Ruth:  What’s the new best answer for biomass?  We can still go on line and use the Siccama biomass calculator.
John:  The best answers are available, except that we don’t agree on how to report uncertainty.
John:  We have Lazarus trees that come back from the dead.  We don’t have species changes; we do have negative growth rates.
We need to back cast previous estimates with the current method.
These kind of details are not what get you ahead in your research productivity, but it’s essential to the LTER.
Are we going to have an update to the Siccama Biomass Calculator?

Archive priorities and possible solutions (Linda Pardo)  2:13

1.     Progress Update
•       Water samples --~30K samples inventoried and reshelved in 2014
•       Funds secured for supplies
–      Barcodes, shelves, balances etc.
•       Need to secure non-FS funds for computer, tablet and salary for 2 people
•       Summer objectives
–      Barcode water samples
–      Organize and catalog solid samples

2.     Assessing space for current and future solid samples
•       24K solid samples currently barcoded in Archive on 143 shelves
•       Available shelves for solid samples: 84-127
–      36 empty
–      48 shelves—’squatters’: uncatalogued solid samples
–      53 shelves: ‘squatters’: ML inlet samples
•       WAY MORE samples than that—need accurate count

3.     We need to define priorities
a.     Identify Core collections
                                               i.     Other important collections
b.     Fate of  non-HB samples
c.     Fate of surveys including HB

4.     What are the core collections?
a.     Water chemistry
         i.     Bulk precip
         ii.     Streams
         iii.     Mirror Lake outlet
b.     Soils
         i.     W1, W5, W6 FF
c.     Vegetation
         i.     WW6, W1, birdline, valley-wide
         ii.     Litterfall
         iii.     Tree cores
d.     Malaise traps

5.     Defining rules for sample submission—
a.     no samples w/o meta data provided by PI
b.     need PI-provided labor to catalog and barcode the samples
6.     David discussed the possibility of a new facility and an NSF proposal
7.     2015 Timeline
Winter 2015
•       Get funding/Hire 1-2 staff
•       Develop rules for Archive submission (meta-data, labor)
•       Contact owners of samples potentially to be removed from Archive
•       Assess solid sample space needs

Summer 2015
•       Barcode water samples
•       Organize and catalog solid samples
•       Barcode core collection

Future
•       Linking chemistry data with water samples in DB*

Discussion
Ruth:  If the LTER includes the Co-Limitation project, there are a lot of samples that need a home after Steve Hamburg and I lose control of space at Brown and ESF.
Scott:  The USFS has been collecting soil samples.  We could charge a per-sample fee for archiving.
Linda:  Depending on our priorities, we

Changes to the format of the Cooperators meeting (Ivan, Pam, Ruth) 2:45
Ideas were sent out with the Agenda.  Discuss:  (These could become survey questions)
• What is the purpose of the meetings?
• Should everyone who wants to give a talk be fit into the program?
history:  we began excluding talks that weren’t directly related to HB.  How else were talks excluded?  (Ruth will ask Tim)  How should talks be selected if there are too many?
Gary:  Could we have posters as well as talks?
Pam, Peter:  We like the fact that the HB meeting allows people of all stages to speak out.
Linda:  That may not be possible, we could have more and more people wanting to speak.
John:  How will we exclude talks?  Who gets to decide?  The moderators for each session?
Ruth:  We can make the talks shorter.  We have been having short talks in the Shoestring session.
Linda:  The meeting has gotten to be more and more crammed, we lost the time to have fun and interact.
Gary, Peter:  We need more time.  We could have two full days, leave another day for committee meetings.
Don:  From the point of view of technicians and students, we need to avoid Mondays, and will they sit through two days in the field?
Nick:  We need to have more fun.  Shorter morning and afternoon sessions and spread it over two days.
Linda:  Would we lose people who had to stay over t
Don:  Ask the speakers whether they want discussion; some people don’t.
Ivan:  We have 2- or 3-minute presentations at (what meeting?)  as well as 5-6 minute sessions, plus longer talks on important themes.
Linda: I would hate invite people to bring posters that nobody would look at?
Gary:  We would have to have a time and have beer
Emma:  We have a session where people put up one slide (a
Ruth: Could posters go in the barn?
Posters could be on a laptop.
Peter:  That undergrads would be inspired by this.
John, Nick, Matt remember their first meeting as a cyrystallizing experience.  Biased sample!
Scott sentds students to talk to famous scientists.
Peter:  Some of them hate it, and it’s good for them to find that out.
Steve:  I made them give talks and they found it a good experience even if they don’t go on in science.
Rebecca:  A poster session could promote conversation with new students.
Peter:  Poster sessions work only if people go to them.  The senior people have to go to them.

Add 2-minute talks as an option on the questionnaire.

3.  Do we want to make time for discussion?  If so, how?
• a time slot at the end of each session.
• time at the end of the meeting or at the end of each day
• some way to be more flexible about scheduling the talks
4. Should some of the talks be shorter?  The Shoestring project has been mixing in shorter talks.
•  Would you personally use a shorter time slot?  (sometimes, always, never)
• Would your students use a shorter time slot?
Who would like to be involved in a committee to develop and administer a survey before our April meeting?  Peter, Gary, Rebecca, Ivan.
Survey Monkey is free for the first 100 responses.
Add:  Are you in favor of broadcasting and recording the meeting?

Discussion
We could invite proposals for thematic discussion, slot them in among the talks or after the talks.
Who will be responsible for the program this year?  Suzanne said that last year was her last.
John Battles would be willing to help with the science program.  We could give session chairs responsibility for organizing.
First he will call for volunteers for session chairs.  These need to be set by the April COS.
We could aim for having two such discussion sessions this year and see how it goes.
We reiterated the need to set the agenda well in advance.  Two weeks in advance.

David:  We had video feed outside, two years ago, and everybody liked it.  Last year this didn’t work.  We could try again.  It involves a tent, but that’s a good thing.  The key is hard wiring it.  David will help.
More controversial:  Should we broadcast it?  If these could be posted on the internet, it would change the character of the meeting.  Let’s ask.
It would be fine to broadcast any presentation that the presenter agrees to; start with the keynote, which is a more formal presentation.

Ivan’s original comments:
I probably am too much of an outsider to be able to be constructive on suggesting timing details for this.  It still is unclear (not anyone's fault, just my newness to the process) what the overall intent is of the meetings, although I get that its to get everyone working there together for an update.  Is there a priority for students over established scientists, early career versus senior scientists?  Is the plan to be sure everyone in certain categories, or present, is able to present?  Is there an general 'takeaway' from the meetings, or just the networking?  I ask not as though these are right or wrong, but whatever the priority for the group is should shape the plan and the details of the agenda. It seems ideal to give everyone who wants to present a chance to do so, for big new projects or findings and end results to be shared with all.  And since everyone is together, it would be ideal to have a dialogue about emerging scientific puzzles, new opportunities, as well as time for discussion that includes everyone, but particularly so graduate students can hear and participate on what might be the big science questions so there is a deeper discourse on the issue that students rarely see in the exchange among the giants in their field.

So can all that be done in the time had?  I doubt it. Thus, are there priorities within those kinds of objectives?  My comments that probably prompted this exercise was in my observation that there were a few important scientific topics that came up that seemed to be ready to take off into an important discussion but that were almost always cut off because of time. And as you watch students, you can see they are compelled by the exchange of agreement and disagreement as science unfolds.  Thus, the question was whether there could be a bit more room for that either with sections of the program, or perhaps in a session about priority themes that emerged from the day of talks and what does the HB community know, and where should they go?

A survey was developed with input from a number of people, and you all responded.  A majority were in favor of a change, but not all for the same change.  More discussion to follow in April.

Other announcements, reports, and ideas for future meetings
David Sleeper:  We need suggestions for keynote speakers.   Send them to David.
RAC (Scott)
Proposal deadline is March 15 (ask for his slide).  Don’t wait until you have funding to ask for permission, especially if you are planning any alterations, need prime real estate, or plan to do something
Who is on the RAC:  Winsdor, Nick, Ian, Chris?

SCC elections (Scott)
Below is the current make up of the SCC. Soon after our meeting, Scott will send an email to the COS list asking for nominations to the one seat that opens this year. All COS members are eligible to make nominations or be nominated. If there are any questions or other opinions on how this works, we can discuss them any time via email or at the meeting.

Ruth Yanai, at large, expires April 2015
Charley Driscoll, LTER PI, expires April 2015; LTER PI rep. will be Gary or Peter
Pam Templer, at large, expires April 2016
Lynn Christenson, at large, expires April 2017
John Battles, at large, expires April 2017
Scott Bailey, appointed by FS project leader as USFS lead scientist
David Sleeper, HBRF executive director
Ivan Fernandez, appointed by SCC as external advisor

How does the COS list get updated?
Criteria are in the bylaws, and what is the procedure.

Adjourn

Incomplete minutes respectfully submitted by Ruth Yanai
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