WinCPR: A BREAKTHROUGH IN MARINE DATA ACCESSIBILITY AND PRESENTATION
Rarely has a tool been produced that provides an exploratory, investigative, fun approach to science for children to pensioners as well as researchers ranging from ecologists to biogeographers to modellers. This tool, WinCPR, is powerful, easy to use and includes colourful options to present and easily manipulate large quantities of data.
Think of routine measurements in time and space for any entity. They are rarely taken when or where they are wanted. To overcome this problem statisticians and modellers have developed techniques to produce gridded datasets. A good example is the gridded global surface temperature that is used by climate modellers.
Today (14 March 2005) sees the release of a new approach to data accessibility using the products of the longest and most extensive marine biological monitoring programme in the world, the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey. CPR machines are towed voluntarily behind Merchant ships on their normal passage. Since the survey started more than 5 million nautical miles of the ocean have been sampled.
Recent results from the survey have shown that plankton has moved North adjacent to the UK by 1000 km, that plankton blooms are occurring much earlier in the year and that a step- wise change (Regime shift) has occurred in marine ecosystems adjacent to the British Isles after the mid 1980s; all changes that have been correlated with global warming.
WinCPR is a gridded database of plankton abundance in the North Sea produced jointly by the University of Genoa, the Network Research Group (University of Plymouth) and SAHFOS. It is compiled from monthly sampling over a fifty year period (1948 to 1997) and contains data for 112 planktonic organisms or indices (both animal, zooplankton and plant, phytoplankton) for a grid of 172 pixels covering the whole of the North Sea. The North Sea is one of the best studied seas in the world, and has been consistently sampled by the CPR survey resulting in more than 50,000 analysed samples, a sound basis for a gridded dataset.
While undertaking his National Service moving books in an Italian library Dr Luigi Vezzulli, now at the University of Genoa, produced the prototype for WinCPR. To facilitate easy and free web access to the browser a Windows compatible software interface has been produced by Drs Dowland, Clarke and Papdaki of the Network Research Group (University of Plymouth). Dr Reid, SAHFOS coordinated the project.
A range of eight colourful plotting options are available for the presentation and visualisation of the included data as graphs, contour plots or maps as well as options to access the data as either Access or Excel files. For example a total of 67,200 distribution maps for all species per month (12 months x 50 years x 112 taxa) is available for the period 1948 to 1997 in the browser.
The package comes fully documented with a detailed ‘Software User Guide’, background publications and information on how to extract data.
The developed software has many other potential applications to make available and present large datasets in the terrestrial sphere, economic and social sciences e.g. population and metorological statistics, river runoff, epidemiology. Anyone interested in developing specific packages that will build on the existing software should contact the Director, SAHFOS.
Prof Winfried Gieskes, University of Groningen, The Netherlands said: “I have installed WinCPR on PCs so that my students can ‘play’ with this information on plankton variability. The browser illustrates extremely well how different species in the plankton react in their distribution and long-term variation through human influence (eutrophication by river discharge) and also large-scale phenomena related to ‘global change’”
Notes to Editors
Plankton
Free floating small organisms, including algae and protozoans, that occur in great numbers and provide the basic food source for all other marine life and especially fish.
SAHFOS
The Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS) is an international charity registered in the UK that operates the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey. The Foundation has been collecting data from the North Atlantic and the North Sea on the biogeography and ecology of plankton since 1931.
University of Genoa
The Laboratory of Microbiology at DIBIO, University of Genoa, has wide experience in temporal and spatial analysis of marine biological data including the Antarctic.
Network Research Group (University of Plymouth)
The Network Research Group (NRG) is a specialised information technology and networking research facility based within the School of Computing, Communications and Electronics at the University of Plymouth. Originally established in 1985, the NRG conducts research in IT Security, Internet & WWW technologies and Mobility.
Funders:
Initial support for this project was provided by WWF International with the UK government department, Defra and the marine environment and fisheries advisory centre, CEFAS sharing the funding.
Future development:
An award of £49,000 has been made to SAHFOS as part of a joint ‘Knowledge Transfer’ programme by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop a North Atlantic version of the database.
Applications:
Education:
The Nuffield Foundation plans to utilise WinCPR as a tool in the development of the UK National Curriculum.
A prototype release has already been used in university education in Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.
Research:
A wide range of potential applications in marine ecology, biogeography, marine management, mathematics, modelling and statistical analysis are possible. The tool has particular potential in the development of indicators, in the study of eutrophication and in fisheries ecology.
WinCPR is Free
Free to the public and the education and scientific communities.
Free download WinCPR at http://cpr.cscan.org/
Rarely has a tool been produced that provides an exploratory, investigative, fun approach to science for children to pensioners as well as researchers ranging from ecologists to biogeographers to modellers. This tool, WinCPR, is powerful, easy to use and includes colourful options to present and easily manipulate large quantities of data.
Think of routine measurements in time and space for any entity. They are rarely taken when or where they are wanted. To overcome this problem statisticians and modellers have developed techniques to produce gridded datasets. A good example is the gridded global surface temperature that is used by climate modellers.
Today (14 March 2005) sees the release of a new approach to data accessibility using the products of the longest and most extensive marine biological monitoring programme in the world, the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey. CPR machines are towed voluntarily behind Merchant ships on their normal passage. Since the survey started more than 5 million nautical miles of the ocean have been sampled.
Recent results from the survey have shown that plankton has moved North adjacent to the UK by 1000 km, that plankton blooms are occurring much earlier in the year and that a step- wise change (Regime shift) has occurred in marine ecosystems adjacent to the British Isles after the mid 1980s; all changes that have been correlated with global warming.
WinCPR is a gridded database of plankton abundance in the North Sea produced jointly by the University of Genoa, the Network Research Group (University of Plymouth) and SAHFOS. It is compiled from monthly sampling over a fifty year period (1948 to 1997) and contains data for 112 planktonic organisms or indices (both animal, zooplankton and plant, phytoplankton) for a grid of 172 pixels covering the whole of the North Sea. The North Sea is one of the best studied seas in the world, and has been consistently sampled by the CPR survey resulting in more than 50,000 analysed samples, a sound basis for a gridded dataset.
While undertaking his National Service moving books in an Italian library Dr Luigi Vezzulli, now at the University of Genoa, produced the prototype for WinCPR. To facilitate easy and free web access to the browser a Windows compatible software interface has been produced by Drs Dowland, Clarke and Papdaki of the Network Research Group (University of Plymouth). Dr Reid, SAHFOS coordinated the project.
A range of eight colourful plotting options are available for the presentation and visualisation of the included data as graphs, contour plots or maps as well as options to access the data as either Access or Excel files. For example a total of 67,200 distribution maps for all species per month (12 months x 50 years x 112 taxa) is available for the period 1948 to 1997 in the browser.
The package comes fully documented with a detailed ‘Software User Guide’, background publications and information on how to extract data.
The developed software has many other potential applications to make available and present large datasets in the terrestrial sphere, economic and social sciences e.g. population and metorological statistics, river runoff, epidemiology. Anyone interested in developing specific packages that will build on the existing software should contact the Director, SAHFOS.
Prof Winfried Gieskes, University of Groningen, The Netherlands said: “I have installed WinCPR on PCs so that my students can ‘play’ with this information on plankton variability. The browser illustrates extremely well how different species in the plankton react in their distribution and long-term variation through human influence (eutrophication by river discharge) and also large-scale phenomena related to ‘global change’”
Notes to Editors
Plankton
Free floating small organisms, including algae and protozoans, that occur in great numbers and provide the basic food source for all other marine life and especially fish.
SAHFOS
The Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS) is an international charity registered in the UK that operates the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey. The Foundation has been collecting data from the North Atlantic and the North Sea on the biogeography and ecology of plankton since 1931.
University of Genoa
The Laboratory of Microbiology at DIBIO, University of Genoa, has wide experience in temporal and spatial analysis of marine biological data including the Antarctic.
Network Research Group (University of Plymouth)
The Network Research Group (NRG) is a specialised information technology and networking research facility based within the School of Computing, Communications and Electronics at the University of Plymouth. Originally established in 1985, the NRG conducts research in IT Security, Internet & WWW technologies and Mobility.
Funders:
Initial support for this project was provided by WWF International with the UK government department, Defra and the marine environment and fisheries advisory centre, CEFAS sharing the funding.
Future development:
An award of £49,000 has been made to SAHFOS as part of a joint ‘Knowledge Transfer’ programme by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop a North Atlantic version of the database.
Applications:
Education:
The Nuffield Foundation plans to utilise WinCPR as a tool in the development of the UK National Curriculum.
A prototype release has already been used in university education in Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.
Research:
A wide range of potential applications in marine ecology, biogeography, marine management, mathematics, modelling and statistical analysis are possible. The tool has particular potential in the development of indicators, in the study of eutrophication and in fisheries ecology.
WinCPR is Free
Free to the public and the education and scientific communities.
Free download WinCPR at http://cpr.cscan.org/
