The Jornada Information Management (IM) team had a busy year with both data publishing and infrastructure upgrades. In 2024, we added over 18 new datasets to our primary data catalog at the EDI repository for a total of 394. Some highlights included the addition of camera trapping datasets from the Ecotone experiment[1] and long-term water level data at the Jornada Basin playas.[2] We also updated over 230 of our long-term datasets with new additions to the time series and/or improved metadata. Some unforeseen downtime of server and networking systems at NMSU campus created an incentive to move more of our IM workflow into the cloud. After a pause in our data publishing activity, we now have more secure, reliable, and accessible IT systems. Some of the new cloud-based storage, computer, and development capacity could be leveraged by Jornada research teams, so if you are interested in this, please reach out to us.
Looking ahead to 2025, we are well positioned to do some exciting things, particularly with regard to standardizing Jornada data and making them more “analysis ready.” Our undergraduate IM assistant, Gillian Trujillo, is busy reformatting JRN biodiversity datasets into “ecocomDP” format,[3] which is something that will allow our biodiversity data to be analyzed alongside similar data from across the LTER and NEON networks. We expect to make strides towards improving access to the huge catalog of JRN sensor network data, including weather stations, and we are also working on R tools for using a wide range of JRN data.
A huge thank you to those of you stepping up to contribute your outstanding data and metadata to the Jornada data commons. We know it takes work to publish data; we appreciate your efforts and will keep trying to make it easier and more beneficial to your future research endeavors. We hope to see you at an upcoming edition of the weekly Data Therapy Thursday meeting or at one of our 2025 workshops or training events, and we are always available via email at jornada.data@nmsu.edu.
[1] Mammal occurrence data derived from camera traps in grassland-shrubland ecotones at 24 sites in the Jornada Basin, southern New Mexico, USA, 2014-ongoing
[2] Water level data (15-min frequency) from 18 instrumented playas in the Jornada Basin, southern New Mexico, USA, from 2016-2022
[3] ecocomDP: A flexible data design pattern for ecological community survey data (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2021.101374)