C. Project Description C. 1 Introduction

C.7 Expected Significance, Relation to Longer-term Goals, and Broader Impact of the Work

This work will have significant impact in the following areas:

1. 
   access to forest information for the Adaptive Management Areas and beyond;
   
2. 
   access to information in general to promote a more-informed public and a more efficient government (through better coordination across agencies and diverse information sources); and
   
3. 
   technical understanding of how to create and exploit superimposed information, a paradigm for using information to support purposes beyond the original.
   

The impact on each of these areas is discussed in turn.

(1) Meeting the research objectives of providing an open, easy-to-use, low-cost system, defined through proactive involvement of the diverse user community, including multiple agencies, (based on our objective to understand how government data is used and how use of data can be facilitated) is expected to produce a system that is widely used. Similarly, meeting the research objectives of providing a standards-based, extensible, Internet-based, scalable system is expected to produce a system that can be broadly deployed with the flexibility to accommodate new scientific, social, or management issues without loss of prior investment. Our focus on integration with other related local, regional, national and international efforts, e.g., regarding terminology and metadata, promotes semantic integration and portability of information across systems.

(2) Although the work will be motivated by the needs of forest information seekers, the approach and the resulting technology is generic. Through appropriate selection or development of terminology and templates for user-created, value-added information, the technology developed here can be used for many other domains. This results in part because the technology will be developed using relevant, generic standards, such as XML [Error: Reference source not found], and because the technology will be extensible. In particular, we require that the system be able to accommodate the introduction of new terminology, new relationships among terms, new references to base information, and new structure types for user-created, value-added information without interfering with existing superimposed information and capability. Additionally, we will use an extensible approach, such as RDF [Error: Reference source not found] to enable our system to exploit emerging tools, e.g., that rely on RDF representations. Finally, the development of additional capability for superimposed information should be readily available for new and for existing superimposed information.

The most important and the most challenging objective for this work is that of providing useful information access. We want relevant information to be found, if it exists. Our premise is that using terminology as a browsable index and using templates to allow users to create structured, value-added information will improve the access to information. Our success in meeting this objective is impossible to guarantee because it is based, in part, on the nature of the information, the nature of relevant metadata, and the nature of the information-seeking behavior. We expect to make strides in this direction due to our intensive involvement of users and our systematic evaluation of both the project and the resulting technology.

(3) The third area of impact is in the fundamental understanding of the two, proposed forms of superimposed information. Delcambre and Maier have articulated a number of research issues associated with superimposed information as a paradigm for information access along with an architecture for superimposed information [⁷⁰, ⁷¹]. This project advances the basic understanding of the tradeoff of model complexity vs. the power of the supported functions (i.e., browsing, navigating, and querying).

The broader impact of this project is also demonstrated by the relationship to the longer-term goals of the investigators.

The relationship of this proposal to Tolle’s long-term research goals center around the management experiment of determining how to implement the adaptive management concept. This concept has not been adopted widely, due to many factors. The major premise is that the principle factor that prevents widespread adoption is the lack of information technology to support the effort.

For the past ten years Landis has worked extensively in the field of forest information from a user’s perspective. He has conducted numerous workshops and focus groups aimed at improving forest information access and dissemination. In 1996, he conducted the World Forest Monitoring Workshop that led to the formation of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ Global Forest Information System initiative. He is a founding member of the task force with a charter to provide coordinated worldwide access to forest information.

The focus of Palmer’s research for the past two decades has been the development of ecological monitoring systems to evaluate the impact of humans on nature. Unless monitoring and research information are organized and made available to a wider audience of users, these monitoring systems are destined to fall far short of reaching their potential. This project has direct application to a number of the monitoring projects that Craig is current involved in including the National Forest Health Monitoring program, Effectiveness Monitoring for the Northwest Forest Plan, and Vital Signs Monitoring for Mojave Desert national parks.

This project aligns squarely with Toccalino’s long-term goals as an educator. The Adaptive Management Areas provide an exciting avenue for linking environmental science theory with practical applications of the theory. The Environmental Monitoring and Restoration graduate program provides an existing and relevant forum for testing the effectiveness of our proposed work with the Adaptive Management Areas.

Maier and Delcambre have a long-standing interest in integration of information, particularly in scientific and environmental applications. They have participated in projects in computational chemistry, materials characterization, deep Earth microbiology, environmental monitoring, and forest canopy research. Most recently, they have put forward the notion of superimposed information as a key component in systems for information integration and reuse. This project will provide a reasonably sized testbed for their research in superimposed information and likely point out areas for further investigation.

The significance of this proposal is also evidenced by the recognition of the importance of this problem at both the national and international level. First the significance of adaptive management practices and the data associated with their use is demonstrated in the following:

Strategic decisions should be made by government agencies at all levels to better manage the collection and use of natural resource information and improve natural resource decision making by (1) making available the best possible natural resource information based on science, and (2) using this information to make open and transparent decisions about natural resources that are coordinated among agencies and levels of government and well-integrated in social, economic, and environmental aspects. This recommendation is intended to provide a firm basis in knowledge to encourage adaptive management in applying sustainable development principles in the face of uncertainty rather than refraining from action until certainty is achieved. [⁷²]

In a more general sense, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (“Earth Summit”) stated in 1992,

Existing national and international mechanisms of information processing and exchange, and of related technical assistance, should be strengthened to ensure effective and equitable availability of information generated at the local, provincial, national and international levels … [⁷³]

Nearly a decade later, the quest for effective environmental information access systems continues according to the President’s Council on Sustainable Development:

Information is relevant to the environmental management framework to the extent that it is meaningfully incorporated into decision-making processes and adds to the learning that leads to problem solving. Open information policies and practices recognize that disclosure, transparency, and active dissemination of information should be the rule, not the exception, with the goal of increasing access to public information for all segments of society. [⁷⁴]

Finally, the composition of the Advisory Board formulated for this project provides evidence of the significance and potential for broader impact of this work. The individuals who have agreed to serve on the Advisory Board are shown in Table 8 with letters of endorsement in Section I. Section I also includes a letter from Dr. Tim Tolle of the USDA Forest Service emphasizing the importance of this work to the mission of the Adaptive Management Areas. Tolle has been an active participant in the preparation of this proposal and will serve a key role in the project. The letter also attests to the agency’s in-kind contribution, estimated at $322,855.

Table 8: Advisory Board Members for this Project
Michel Biezunski	Information Organization Consultant, Paris, France Co-author of the upcoming ISO Standard for Topic Maps (ISO/IEC 13250)
Mark Whiting	Staff Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Specialist in environmental information systems and superimposed models
Martin Goebel	President, Sustainable Northwest, non-profit organization Focused on involving local communities in decisions involving natural resources
Frederick Johnson	Executive Director, International Model Forest Network Secretariat, Ottawa, Canada Interested in this project serving as a model for the International Model Forest Network
Robert J. Devlin	Acting Deputy Regional Forester Interested in efficiently accessing the large volume of research information currently in diverse formats and locations
Monty Knudsen	Chief, Office of Technical Support, Forest Resources, USDI Fish and Wildlife Service Particularly interested in cross-agency access to forest information
Cynthia Miner	Communications Director, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station Interested in providing access to forest research information inside and outside gov’t.
J. Burley	President, International Union of Forest Research Organizations, Oxford, UK Interested in the progress of this project and how it might support the Global Forest Information Service

D. References

1 “Sustainable development requires that communities have the ability to compile and link disparate sets of data to create the information bases needed for effective decision making.” Sustainable America: A New Consensus for Prosperity, Opportunity, and A Healthy Environment for the Future, Chapter 3, February 1996.

2 Issues of concern to the nation influence the activities of the USDA Forest Service. Historically, the issues revolved around hunting, later maximizing yield, still later the sustainability of our natural resources.

3 Dr. Toccalino will use our system in an environmental science graduate class, to test its utility and effectiveness.

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