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The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity
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 Building and Evaluating a Metadata-based Framework for
Integrating Heterogeneous Scientific Data

Overview

The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB) is a national network intended to facilitate ecological and environmental research on biocomplexity. It enables the efficient discovery, access, interpretation, integration, and analysis of complex ecological data from a highly distributed set of field stations, laboratories, research sites, and individual researchers.

Search for Data on the KNB...

 

Software

Go to our software tools page to download and find documentation for all of our software, including:

 

What's New
Metacat version 1.8.0 released on 11 December, 2007. See the software section for details. 
Metacat version 1.7.0 released on 30 March, 2007. See the software section for details. 
Morpho version 1.6.1 released on 14 July, 2006. See the software section for details. 
Metacat 1.6.0 released on 18 August, 2006. See the software section for details.
EML version 2.0.1 released on 27 August, 2004. See the software section for details.

 

KNB Project Foci
The NSF proposal for this project describes our original plans in detail. The following sections describe some of the details of our current progress and results.

Informatics research

 

This section outlines the theoretical and technical approaches being investigated in this project for managing complex ecological data and metadata. It includes an overview of the architecture of the KNB network, explains how the various infrastructure components of the KNB work together, and provides links to the descriptions of both Metacat, our flexible XML database for metadata storage, and Morpho, our data management application designed for scientists to handle their data management needs.

Biodiversity research

 

This section describes the research on the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem productivity that is being conducted as part of this project. It includes an overview of this complex relationship and an outline for approaching it using the KNB.

Education, Outreach, and Training

 

This section describes the dissemination of the computer science and informatics products of our research to potential users of our prototype network (scientists, graduate students, policy makers) in ecology and other disciplines.

 

Sponsored and developed by:
 
TTU Logo LTER Logo
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Texas Tech University Long Term Ecological Research Network San Diego Supercomputer Center
National Science Foundation Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Program
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DEB99–80154. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Web Contact: jones@nceas.ucsb.edu