Data Management and the Illinois Decision Support System
The INHS Illinois River Biological Station at Havana, Illinois (Havana Field
Station: www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cae/ltrm/cae_hfs.html) is a remote installation of
the INHS and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). The station
hosts a Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) with major funding
provided by the IDNR, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS), and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. The primary
responsibility of Havana LTRMP staff is monitoring water quality, vegetation,
macro-invertebrates, and fish along an 80-mile reach of the Illinois River.
The mission of the LTRMP is to provide decision-
makers with information
for sustainable management of the Illinois River.
The Illinois River Decision Support System
(ILRDSS: http://ilrdss.sws.
uiuc.edu, see Fig. 1) is a Web-based interface that provides access to
high-quality information about the Illinois River and its watershed. It is
currently supported by staff from several Illinois scientific surveys, but is
largely an endeavor of the Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS). The ILRDSS
began in 1999 as a resource for water quality and hydrologic model
investigations. Its design has expanded to include information resources,
modular databases, and simulation models to evaluate a wide range of impacts
upon restoration activities and sustainability of the Illinois River.
This ILRDSS requires information from a variety of sources. Largely lacking at
present are sources of biological data. The LTRMP staff at Havana generate
large volumes of biological data and have done so for over a decade. Currently
these data are maintained in an Oracle database at the USGS Upper Midwest
Environmental Science Center (UMESC) in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The latter
provides public access to the data at www.umesc.usgs.gov/index.html that can be
queried by year, GIS coordinates, organism (fish and invertebrates mostly), and
so on. These data may be downloaded as a text file. Lacking at this point in
the UMESC data management structure is the conversion of data into information
useful in decision making. These data would be a valuable addition to the
ILRDSS.
Funds associated with the ILRDSS now support a database developer/manager,
Edward Chen, at the INHS. Until recently, he has been designing a database
management structure for the Critical Trends Assessment Program, a statewide
monitoring program consisting of both scientists and volunteers
(http://dnr.state.il.us/orep/inrin/ctap/).
Additional funding is now available
for a Web programmer. This second position will help form the basis of a data
management team. This latest development will enable the team to undertake
additional data management objectives for the LTRMP staff at Havana.
Negotiations are now under way between the team and LTRMP staff to
* create a relational database;
* create Web interfaces to host the database for input and output functions;
* develop automated, standard report templates for converting data to
information for a range of uses and levels of understanding;
* design a Web geographic information system interface to visualize LTRMP data
spatially.
The undertaking of these objectives will begin sometime in the spring of 2002.
Having a centralized data management system at Havana will not only aid LTRMP
staff in meeting their objectives for monitoring the Illinois River, but will
also provide an integrated vehicle for delivering information to a wide range
of users. Coupling this data source with additional information from the
ILRDSS will provide the kind of integrated information needed to make
management decisions for the Illinois River basin.
Dr. R. Edward DeWalt, Center for Biodiversity
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