Our data manager was reading the internet one day and found a little post about how many ‘pleasant weather days’ there are across the country. After we discussed it a bit, we kept returning to the question of what constitutes a ‘pleasant day’ and how the total number of days has changed over the years. …
This time around, I am not going to make the mistake by looking at the climatology for a particular day after said day occurs. Fourth of July is a big holiday in the US and generally, a big outdoor holiday with parades, barbeques, concerts, and, of course, fireworks! Similar to the Memorial Day post, I …
This really should be been written before this week but the author didn’t think to write this until now. Memorial Day and the end of May marks a turn in the weather as we make the turn toward the summer heat and into the dry season in the inland Pacific Northwest. Growing up, my parents …
During the previous DataCAFe, PhD candidate Milica Radanovic lead a discussion on her thesis work while fending off rabid committee members and lively collaborators. A summary of her thesis, in her words, is below. Environmental impacts on the nitrogen cycle as a physical process creating or depleting pools of reactive nitrogen in soil has been …
Read more “DataCAFe | The biology behind reactive nitrogen loss”
For those not in Pullman, early April was an eventful time for us, a lot of rain and even some flooding! For us weather nerds (i.e., the author), these types of events are fun and not fun at the same time. They are fun because they provide interesting data and neat pictures but not fun …
Read more “Putting Pullman’s extreme April precipitation into a historical context”
Research is becoming increasingly more reliant on computational workflows, such as combining diverse datasets, processing big data, running computational models, and organizing information across geographically dispersed and interdisciplinary teams. Because the scientific process is anchored on reproducibility and peer review, funding organizations and journals have adjusted their strategies to accommodate the new landscape. It is …
Read more “DataCAFe | Barriers to proper data management in research”
During CAF LTAR’s DataCAFe, Dr. Eric Russell led a discussion on working with data from different sources and ways to avoid issues. He used his experience working with 18 LTAR sites as a way to illustrate his points. His write up is below. As a co-lead processing eddy covariance (EC) data for an active working …
Read more “DataCAFe | Lessons learned from doing data synthesis as part of the LTAR Network”
During CAF LTAR’s DataCAFe, Qiuping (Ellen) Peng led a discussion on different methods of calculating mean residence time (MRT) of soil organic matter. After much discussion and merriment, Ellen then tried to steer the crowd towards a discussion on how to relate MRT to flux data from EC towers. Her write up is below. Understanding …
Read more “DataCAFe | Calculating mean residence time of soil organic matter”