NPS I&M South Florida/Caribbean NetworkMiami, FL

Judd PattersonBrian Witcher

Continuous DataCollection In

Florida and theU.S. Virgin Islands

Overview

1) What we collect water temperature weather station

2) Access database import wizard data validation

3) Workarounds Excel graphing (VB)

4) Problems size of dataset graphing

improvements

Where We Work

40 reef temperature

1 weather station4 reef

temperature

2 weather stations4 reef

temperature

10 reef temperature

Water Temperature

HOBO water temperature loggers on coral reefs

located at 47 reef sites in BISC, BUIS, DRTO, and VIIS

several sites have paired sensors

data point every 2 hours Yawzi Reef 1988-present

• one of the longest water temperature datasets in the Caribbean

Why we do this…

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Tem

pera

ture

(Cel

sius

)

Historically HOT seawater temps

Source: adapted from Miller et al. 2009

Why we do this…

2005 resulted in massivecoral bleaching and disease…

…and ultimately 60% decline in coral cover in the U.S. Virgin

Islands

Weather Stations

• land-based weather data collection in the USVI and Florida

• full weather station• storing 9 sensor values• logging every 10 minutes

• independent rain gauge• storing 2 sensor values• logging every 10 minutes

Weather Stations1.Download data with a HOBO shuttle

Weather Stations2.Open hobo/dtf and convert to csv

Data Validation Workflow3.Access database – Import

Weather Stations3.Access database – Import

Weather Stations4.Access database – Manual Validation

Spike

• Check suspicious readings with local airport weather

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/TISX/2010/4/14/DailyHistory.html

Flatline

Export/Graphing

Pick a station, pick a date range, select the export location...

• VB creates appropriate query• VB creates Excel document from template and

loads with query data

Workarounds

Workarounds

Workarounds

Data ForEVER

Remaining Issues

1) Size of dataset With each new import a performance hit is

noticeable …inevitable switch to SQL Server on the horizon

2) Graphing Excel is also at its limit when dealing with large

datasets; particularly graphing

Thanks!Questions?