Virtual Oregon: seamless access to distributed environmental information

Virtual Oregon is a new data coordination center established at Oregon State University (OSU) in order to: (1) archive environmental and other place-based data on Oregon and associated areas; (2) make those data accessible to a broad spectrum of agencies and individuals via innovative web interfaces; (3) identify key data sets that are not yet available and encourage their collection and dissemination; and (4) facilitate development of statewide standards for archiving, documenting, and disseminating data. Rather than co-locating researchers and data in a physical center, Virtual Oregon employs a distributed architecture that occupies multiple locations while users are presented with the illusion of a single, centralized facility. This approach was selected not just to maximize the impact on campus students, faculty, and staff but also toservice broader interactions with extension agents and other members of OSU's statewide community.Virtual Oregon builds on regional GIS centers and databanks in a wide range of disciplines, providing decades of research data on topics as varied as climate, biodiversity, land ownership, water quality, wildfire, and agricultural production. Our proximity to agencies such as the Oregon Climate Service, Oregon Natural Heritage Program, Oregon Flora Project, OSU Herbarium, EPA, and Forest Service adds breadth to data type and availability. Designed as a distributed architecture, Virtual Oregon has four nodes, each of which serves as a center and clearinghouse for distinct types of information and services: Department of Geosciences (College of Science): geospatial coverages, digital aerial and orthoimagery and associated base dataForestry Sciences Laboratory (USDA Forest Service and College of Forestry): ecological and resource management databases; data analyses; data from computational simulationsNorthwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering (NACSE): databases based on specimen collections, field observation, images, or analysis of historical documents; user interface designValley Library: published maps, books and archival publications, gray literature, photographs and video.Data are harvested from a variety of individuals and research centers and maintained in the distributed nodes using enterprise RDBMS products (Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server) residing on UNIX and Windows platforms. Query Markup Language (QML, a middleware product developed at NACSE) supports database-to-Web interactions by transparently performing queries across multiple RDBMSs and displaying the results as though from a single source. Web-based mapping interfaces (powered by ESRI's Internet Map Server and Spatial Database Engine products) can also be used to explore data visually.As the demonstration will show, users currently have the option of beginning with either the "thematic" or "place-based" interfaces. Ultimately, users will be able to move freely back and forth between the two paradigms, for example initially narrowing the scope of inquiry based on discipline or attributes, moving to the visual interface to refine the search based on location or some set of geospatial characteristics, then moving back to query-based exploration to delve to fine levels of detail. Usability engineering methodologies are being applied so that all navigation and query mechanisms are both maximally productive and easily learned by novices.