Scientific Data Infrastructure for Qinghai

Scientific Data Infrastructure for Qinghai Lake Joint Research Center

Jian-hui Li¹ *, Yuan-chun zhou¹, Yu-fang Hou¹, Yuan-Sheng Hou², Zhi-yi Huang¹, Hai-ting Zhang¹

¹Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences

²Qinghai Lake National Natural Reserve

The Qinghai Lake is the largest saline lake in China, which is rich in plants and aquatic biological resources, and also is a paradise of migratory birds. The Qinghai Lake Joint Research Center (QLJRC) set up by some institutes of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Qinghai Lake National Natural Reserve (QLNNR) in 2007, whose research areas focus on protection of ecological environment and biodiversity, wild bird behavior and disease. The Scientific Data Infrastructure (SDI) is a very important cyber-infrastructure supporting cross-discipline research for this center. SDI not only manages regular survey and observation data by QLNNR, including data of wild bird surveillance, vegetation sampling, species and biodiversity, but also collects research data created by QLJRC, for example, geographic data, remote sensing data, migratory birds movement data and virus data, etc. SDI provides these data long-term preservation and curation, integrates multi-discipline data and provides data access services for researchers. SDI should also provide scientific data analysis and visualization tools. By now, several databases have been developed, including multimedia database of wild birds surveillance, GPS database of migratory birds movement, vegetation investigation and biodiversity database, etc. A data portal has been set up, which provides integrated data access services for all researcher of QLJRC. Others can open access metadata of SDI via Web. A field data collecting equipment, named BirdPDA, has been developed, which integrates such functions as acquiring GPS data, taking photos and recording voice. So it helps staffs and researchers of QLNNR collect data according to common format easily while they are doing field work. Some tools for data analysis and visualization are also under development. In the near future, more research databases will be developed and the data portal will try to provide semantic-based data search service.