The End: Thoughts, Final Answers and Recommendations

Final Answers

At the mid blog check up I only had two unanswered questions remaining: Open Access and serendipitously scanning. Based on my limited searching, Greg Asner does not use open access literature; however, he does freely share his findings.

Someone had commented previously that I really had all the information I needed to answer the question: Would they serendipitously scan for ideas? Where? Being bogged down in the middle of the project, trying to answer the questions and figure how things work, I couldn’t see what they meant. So I looked up serendipity on Dictionary.com and was rerouted to Reference.com.

The role of serendipity in science and technology
One aspect of Walpole's original definition of serendipity that is often missed in modern discussions of the word is the "sagacity" of being able to link together apparently innocuous facts to come to a valuable conclusion. Thus, while some scientists and inventors are reluctant about reporting accidental discoveries, others openly admit its role; in fact serendipity is a major component of scientific discoveries and inventions. According to M.K. Stoskopf "it should be recognized that serendipitous discoveries are of significant value in the advancement of science and often present the foundation for important intellectual leaps of understanding.

Serependity encyclopedia topics at Reference.com. Retrieved February 27, 2009 from http://reference.com.

So where does Greg Asner find inspiration? One could say that his whole career started with a serependitious moment in Hawaii. He decided to work on a research team gathering data; the field teams were limited to relatively small samples. He knew there had to be a better way. This lead to the development of CAO-Alpha system and the CAO-Beta system that use 3-D laser scanners with an imaging spectrometer system to give complete analysis and images of large tracts of land.

Recommendations to a Budding Scientist
Join a professional association or two; take advantage of student rates for as long as you can. By being involved, you will have access to on-line journals, archives, databases and other goodies. Also try to attend a conference; these events can be amazingly informative. Join a LISTServ even if you don’t feel you have anything to contribute. You can learn from others discussions.

Take advantage of the library and the librarians experience with the materials at the library. Librarians are information specialists. They can help you hone your search skills; this will save you endless aggravation in the long run.

Take the time to learn how a particular database operates. Do the tutorial or at least read the FAQs section. Once again this will save time and aggravation.

Learn to write. Technical writing is different than the creative writing you were taught in high school English class.

Find a mentor. Maybe your advisor can fill this role or maybe someone outside your department.

Read. Read. Read. Read online, or in print both within and outside your chosen field. Check out the library’s journal collection. Even many public libraries carry general science journals such as Science, Nature, and Science News.

Look for role models. Has a particular scientist’s work intrigued you? Research time! Find out what their education and career path has been.

Why listen to me? I graduated as a geologist 21 years ago. I couldn’t write technically. Databases were just evolving. Card catalogues were still on cards. I bombed on the only research paper I had to write, because I didn’t know how to research. I didn’t take full advantage of the GSA conference I attended. The only thing I did right was join GSA and read some professional literature: Geology and GSA Bulletin.

Thoughts - Mistakes I’ve made along the way

Biography – big mistake
My big mistake was not reading Greg Asner CV. If I had read his CV, I would have saved some time and headaches. By reading through the 157 peer reviewed journal citations, I would have quickly seen what journals he published in. Next, the organizations that he is a member of reveal the interdisciplinary nature of his research.

Web of Science – more mistakes
Yes, I completed the web of science short assignment and read the articles about the product history and development. But I had only glossed over the course lecture notes, if I had really paid attention I would have avoided some of the Asner, Asner G or Asner G* problems. Greg Asner list of published articles from his CV would have made searching easier and I could have confirmed the accuracy of my results.

Clusty
Frustration. Then I refined my techniques. I will have to play with search engine a lot more before I can really determine its worth to me.

Well that’s it. This blog is over; however, I may have found some inspiration for my upcoming pathfinder project particularly in the mistakes and roadblocks I have encountered. - Karen

Bits, Bytes and a little housekeeping

I had planned on posting this blog yesterday (Thursday) doing a little housekeeping, picking up bits and pieces of information, trolling the Internet and databases for a few more precious bytes of information. Then my tween walked through the front door the unwitting participant in a physics experiment gone wrong. Here is the scenario: tween (mass 80-85 lbs.) in the back of the bus and driver swerves to avoid a car that runs a stop sign. The motion of the swerve and the lack of suspension as the bus bumps over the curb which throws the tween from the seat, who comes to rest on the floor. Force, motion and gravity- thanks for the science review. But wait there is more – medicine. Several hours at the ER was next on the list and fortunately, a simple break of the humorous above the growth plant. Too bad my tween couldn’t throw a little engineering in for me.

This posting will have a little bit of this and a little bit of that. My goal is to explore a few more resources. Starting with the easy stuff first.

Publishing
Under the publications section his CV, Greg Asner lists out 199 published items including peer reviewed papers, edited books, proceedings, book reviews and technical reports. There is a second list of meeting presentations with published abstracts; this list runs for six and half pages. Note to self, the best place to start when researching an individual is their CV. Also crossing checking database results to a CV would confirm the accuracy of the results.

Professional Associations
Greg Asner is a member of several professional associations. These associations have several publications such as Biotropic, Tropinet, Liana, Amiogos, Ecology, Ecology Applications, Geophysical Research Letters, Biogeosciences, BioScience and Photogrammetric Engineering + Remote Sensing. Several of these associations maintain databases, online archive, online journals, podcasts, and RSS feeds.

Association for Tropical Biology
Organization for Tropical Studies
Ecological Society of America
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

Moreover, Greg Asner is a journal reviewer and has several major service commitments including

Chair, NASA Senior Review Committee
Carnegie Airborne Observatory program
NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network) Airborne Remote Sensing Program
Scientific Steering Committee for the Large-scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazônia
(LBA) Program
Scientific Steering Committee for bioDISCOVERY, Diversitas International

Clusty: the good and the ugly
Clusty is a “clustering service engine” according to the tagline. I typed in Greg Asner into the search dialogue box and received 8,590 results with the top 180 results listed for me. The good was a detail link that reported where the data was harvested (New York Times - 0, Open Directory - 0). The ugly was that in the top ten was a link to an “adult entertainment” site. Using quotes in the search, limited the results to 372 results and the list of the top 155 were all related to Greg Asner. New information gleaned from the data include that Greg Asner was involved with National Geographic Strange Days on Planet Earth, and that he is on ITAP Listserv. Also the image bank could be useful for a typical student report. Because I work in the youth services department of a library, I will not be recommending this search engine to students. Actually because of filtering, I am not sure if this site could be accessed at the library (CCL accepts e-rate and thus must follow Federal regulations). However, it might be a good tool (with parental supervision) for my own tweens and teen.

Periodicals and Newspapers (not the academic stuff)
One of my classmates had found a wealth of information on her scientist in the more general periodicals. A search of Newspaper Source database netted two articles:
Levine, B. (10/15/2007). ‘Brilliant’ minds think alike. USA Today.
Block, M. (10/20/2005). Analysis: mixed report for state of Amazon forest. All Things Considered (NPR).

Thoughts
I will do a wrap up in the next blog.


Next blog – The End: Thoughts, Final Answers and Recommendations to a Budding Scientist

Web of Science

As a class we recently had a short assignment that had us exploring the various resources and ways to manipulate data in the ISI Web of Science. The recent assignment was generally fun and straight forward. Several classmates had used the ISI Web of Science as a research tool for this project. Unfortunately my recent sojourn into ISI Web of Knowledge and Web Science was rather frustrating and confusing. Perhaps someone out there can explain what went wrong.

ISI Web of Knowledge
My first search in the Web of Knowledge (all databases) for Asner G yielded 14 records. These results included articles, meetings/proceedings, reviews and book. However when I searched on Anser G* there were 165 records. A source title analysis of these records found that the top two journals were Remote Sensing of Environment, and Ecosytems. Of the 165 records, 145 were in the Science + Technology subject.

Web of Science
An author search on Asner yielded 226 records. Two distinct author sets were selected to further refine the results. A distinct author set is a “discovery tool showing sets of papers likely written by the same author.” This reduced the number of records to 56. A subject area analysis of the records indicated that the articles/proceedings fell into the following categories: environmental sciences, ecology, and geosciences, multidisciplinary. The source title analysis found the top three were Ecological Applications, Global Change Policy, and Remote Sensing of Environment. Now here is where things get strange. I did another search on Asner G and only got 4 records. When I searched on Asner G*, I got 78 records (a bit more than the 56 above). The subject area analysis broke down to environmental sciences, ecology and remote sensing.

A citation report on Asner G* had total of 1,234 citations (930 when self-citations were removed). The most cited article was “Global Consequences of Land Use” published in Science (July 2005). More data gleaned from the citation report showed that Greg Asner published the most in 2004 and that 2008 had the most citations. The h-index was 16. The h-index or Hirsch-index measures not only the quantity of citations, but the quality of the publications. The h-index “helps to identify distinguished scientists, whose publications are constantly highly cited, as long as the author mostly publishes in a single discipline” (Tenopir, 2007). The combination of remote sensing (topic) and Asner (author) netted 39 results. The source titles included Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, Remote Sensing of Environment, Ecological Applications, Global Change Biology and several more.

ISI Web of Knowledge. http://access.products.com/educate

Tenopir, C. (2007). Measuring impact and quality. Library Journal, 132 (14), 30.

Thoughts
So what does all this mean? Well, first when doing an author search the name is very important. It appears that better search results are netted when an asterick is used with the author’s name. Limiting a search by topic and author will reduce the number of results. The citation report is a nifty feature; depending on how long the scientist has been publishing one could track how quickly articles impact the field. Finally, the subject areas reported confirm that Greg Asner work is multidisciplinary in nature and in reporting. As for my experiments with ISI, some tutorials and further experimentation will be needed to really get the hang of this database. This just in according to a posting on the class discussion board the simpler the search the better the results. One should search on the primary author and not the co-authors for an article. However, I am still mystified about the variety of results for Asner, Asner G and Asner G*.

Next blog – Bits, Bytes, and a little housekeeping

Open Access

Are any of the journals that Greg Asner cites available through open access mediums such as The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OAISTER, and Google Scholar? A small sample of five articles was reviewed and any journal that was cited at least three times was checked against the listed mediums. The list included 20 journals: Agronomy Journal, Annals of Glaciology, Biogeochemistry, Biological Invasions, Bulletin of American Meteorological Society, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Ecology, Geophysical Research Letters, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, Journal of Glaciology, Quarterly Journal of Royal Meteorological Society, Remote Sensing of Environment, Science, Transactions on GeoScience & Remote Sensing and Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Below is a description of the resources and the search findings.

Directory of Open Access Journals
www.doaj.org

The DOAJ “covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.” The DOAJ currently holds 3,888 journals with 260,523 articles. The DOAJ can be searched by journal, subject, title and even author. None of the above listed journals were available at this time.

OAIster
www.oaister.org

“OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources.” The catalog provides “access to these digital resources by harvesting using the OAI-PHH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).” OAIster can be searched by title, author, subject, language or entire records; moreover, format can be selected (i.e. audio, text, or visual). Although I was able to find 15,979 records on remote sensing and another 70,694 for science, neither Science nor Remote Sensing of Environment were in the journal listings. None of the 20 listed journals were in this catalog. I was able to find 17 records when I search on Greg Asner.

Google Scholar
www.google.com

“Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search scholarly literature.” Articles are ranked “the way researchers do weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature.” Searching Google Scholar is a lot like searching Google. The advance search feature allows for specific parameters like date range, journal title and more. Many of the journals were available, but only the abstract with a link to pay service such as SpringerLink, or CABI Abstract. Some articles were available; those articles that were in conjunction with a major university often had complete pdf files. One point made in the help section was to check with your library; however, if a researcher had a library with excellent resources they would probably skip Google Scholar. Of the three mediums, I found Google the most frustrating. The one bright spot was finding the American Meteorological Society website; there one can access a number of journals and bulletins including the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Journal of Climate and Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Conclusions
Based on my brief analysis, Greg Asner does not appear to use open access journals. The sample size used for this analysis was very small. However, several of his articles were available at OAIster and even more on Google Scholar. Lastly, published works by Mr. Asner and his colleagues are available through CAO and AsnerLab websites.

Next blog – Web of Science

Mid Blog CheckUp

This time I wanted to stop the research and to check to see how far I have come in reaching my goal (understanding how a scientist pursues his research), to see what still lies unanswered, and what are some of my classmates have discovered.

First, questions that have been answered: where would you find a more complete description of their research; any patterns in their literature use; and interdisciplinary aspects to their work. A more complete description of their work was discussed in the second and fourth blogs (biography and look at websites). Literature cited in research articles are primarily in the field of remote sensing, ecology, and spectroscopy(third blog). The interdisciplinary aspects of his work are evident in both the variety of journals cited and the research areas on the staff page of the website.

Next, what still remains unanswered? Is there any evidence that they participate in some form of social (computerized or otherwise) networking –especially ones where they are exchanging information with colleagues? For this question, I will go back to Mr. Asner CV and the CAO and AsnerLab websites for direction. [I probably should note here that I requested and received two articles from CAO published in 2007 and 2008.] Are the journals, or other information that they citing, open access? I am going to take a look at the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OAISTER(catalog of digital resources), and GoogleScholar and see if any of the journals cited are available. Would they serendipitously scan for ideas? Where? This one seems to be a difficult one and right now I am at a loss.

Lastly, can I glean any ideas, or inspiration from what some of my classmates have been doing with their projects?

Catherine at www.interestingscientist.blogspot.com is researching Kristi Anseth. This blog reminded me to look outside the world of peer reviewed journals and look for general news stories involving my scientist.

Laura at www.lolathelibrarian.blogspot.com is researching Rebecca Saxe. This blog is a lesson is perseverance; Laura has hit a number of roadblocks in her study, but has still found a wealth of information.

Amanda at www.abrooks101.blogspot.com is researching Laurie Santos. This blog answered the questioned where to start looking to answer the social networking/exchange of ideas question – professional associations.

Clare at www.ckeatingls556.blogspot.com is researching Monica Medina. This blog reminded me to look at the Web of Science and Clusty.

Next blog – Open Access

What’s happening at the Carnegie Airborne Observatory?

In this posting, I had planned on evaluating the Carnegie Airborne Observatory website. While Googling Mr. Asner I found another research group he heads the Laboratory for Regional Ecological Studies. I will therefore look at each website and see what we can glean.

Carnegie Airborne Observatory

“The Carnegie Airborne Observatory combines advanced spectroscopic imaging and waveform laser remote sensing technologies to study ecosystems anywhere in the world. The CAO mission is to understand how changes in land use, climate, and natural disturbances affect the structure, composition, and functioning of ecosystems and how these changes alter the services provided by ecosystems to people.” There are separate pages for video gallery and image gallery where you can see the output of remote sensing data collection. It is very cool to say the least. [One of my favorites is an upload dated 6/18/08. This video combines “hyperspectral imaging and LiDAR into a single measurement.” Although the image is a 3-D representation of vegetation, the video image is surreal like a Salvador Dali painting of early spring daffodil leaves sprouting through the soil.]

There is a listing of publications that are available on request. The CAO systems page is enlightening and I am once again going to quote the website “the CAO is the first fully integrated 3-D laser scanner and imaging spectrometer system designed for ecological research. The CAO can fly in two distinct modes, depending upon science questions. The CAO-Alpha system can map at a spatial resolution of 0.1 – 1.5 meters. The CAO-Beta system is intended to fly larger regions with more complete spectral sampling at 3-4 meters spatial resolution.” There is further explanation of CAO system as well as the AToMs system. The AToMs system is under development and a cross section schematic is posted. The final two pages of the website discuss the facilities in California and Hawaii, and the contact information with a staff list.

http://cao.stanford.edu/


Laboratory for Regional Ecological Studies

The homepage welcomes and briefly explains that they “study how ecosystems and the services they provide to people are changing at regional levels. [The] group consists of ecologists, remote sensing specialists, biogeochemists and land-use modelers working together scientifically to support conservation management, and policy development.” There are links to recent news and lab highlights. The publication page list includes 18 peer-reviewed journal articles, 2 book reviews and 2 technical reports. There is a note that all publications are available by emailing the publication manager. The Projects page lists the current projects at the Laboratory and their sponsors; there are 8 projects including:

Airborne studies of vegetation-animal-fire dynamics in Kruger National Park. Sponsored by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Forest disturbance and selective logging throughout Borneo. Sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute.

Effects of invasive species on ecosystem structure and function: Combining airborne imaging spectroscopy and field studies in Hawaii. Sponsored by NASA.

The people page lists the staff and their research areas. It is interesting to note that all the researchers including the students have more than one area of research. Some of the areas of research are remote sensing, ecology, anthropology, terrain modeling, cultural geography, biogeochemistry, and computer programming.

http://asnerlab.stanford.edu/


Thoughts

So have we learned anything from looking at these websites? Regarding information seeking habitats of Mr. Asner – we have learned nothing, but we have learned that the two organizations he is affiliated with do share their publications. Are there interdisciplinary aspects to their work? Most definitely, the articles discussed in the previous blog, the research areas of the scientists, the nature of the projects themselves all confirm that Mr. Asner and his colleagues work is interdisciplinary. Remove any aspect of their work and the picture (or video) would be incomplete.

Next posting – Mid Blog Checkup

Literature Review, the early years

This posting will look at three of Greg Asner’s publications from nearly a decade ago. By analyzing the articles and the references cited, I hope to answer two of the questions from the introduction.

Can you see any patterns in their literature use?
Where might they systematically look for information?

Each article will be briefly summarized, clarified, and then references will be analyzed. Please note that I am summarizing the articles to the best of my ability (practicing geologist 1988 -1998); moreover, any technical glitches are mine and mine alone – they should not be attributed to the study subject.

Spectrometry of pasture conditions

Most of the previous “remote sensing studies of the Amazon Basin have focused on land-cover changes.” This study was concerned with the composition of the soil and plant matter. The question proposed – “Are there alternative biophysical remote sensing measurements that could be made in the dry season to indicate time-integrated canopy and biogeochemical processes?” Several study sites were chose; physical samples of the soil were collected and analyzed. Next the canopy structure was analyzed using spectrometry [measurement of wavelengths of light or other electromagnetic radiation]. Specifically, the plant area index was determined and then shortwave reflective data was collected along a transect [a predetermined study area]. Then reflective data collected was used in a photon transport model. [A model is a highly specific piece of computer software that predicts on outcome based on the data given – like the models used to predict weather.] The report concluded that photon transport modeling “provided a physically consistent way to convert the data to canopy structural attributes.” The study also found that the older pastures and those with coarser soil texture (e.g. sandy) had lower levels of carbon and nitrogen; moreover, potassium also decreased with age of the pasture. The authors concluded that their method of using hyperspectral reflectance data and photon transport inverse modeling” showed promise and with the deployment of new space born imagers the results could get even better.

Asner, G. P., Townsend, A. R. & Bustamante, M. M. C. (1999). Spectrometry of pasture condition and biogeochemistry in the Central Amazon Basin. Geophysical Research Letters, 26 (17), 2769-2772. Retrieved February 3, 2009 from Google Scholar.

The references for the above article include eight journals, one technical report and one book on soil analysis. The journals included Remote Sensing of Environment, Geoderma, Oecologia, BioScience, Journal of Quantative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Agricultural and Forest Meterology, Science, and Annual Review of Ecology Systematics. Not surprisingly given the topic of the article, four different articles from Remote Sensing of Environment were cited.

Measuring Fractional Cover

This study compared five different approaches to measuring ground cover: “(1) digital imagery with Agricultural Digital Camera (ADC), (2) radiation transmittance with an LAI-2000 Plant Canopy Analyzer, (3) radiation transmittance with a Ceptometer quantum line sensor, (4) ecosystem height variation with airborne laser altimetry and (5) destructive sampling with an LI-3000 leaf area meter and photographic analysis.” The area tested was shrubland which exists in hot, dry areas and “cover approximately 9% of the Earth’s vegetated surface.” Monitoring the amount of shrubland is “important for natural resource managers.” There is a discussion of the test site (Jornada Long-Term Ecological Research), the methodology of each sampling method, and comparison between the methods. The destructive sampling was the least effective method as the choice of the representative plant sample was subjective. The results of the study “suggest that ADC is both efficient and accurate for long term or large-scale monitoring of arid ecosystems.”

White, M.A., Asner, G.P., Neman, R.R., Privette, J.L. & Running, S.W. (2000). Measuring fractional cover and leaf area index in arid ecosystems: digital camera, radiation transmittance and laser altimetry methods. Remote Sensing of Environment, 74, 45-57. Retrieved February 3, 2009 from Google Scholar.

The references for the above article include 18 journals, four books, and one operating manual. The journals included Remote Sensing of Environment, Ecology, Climate Change, Agronomy Journal, International Journal of Remote Sensing, and Canadian Journal of Forest Research. Once again Remote Sensing of Environment had the most citations at eight. Book citations included articles from Ecosystems of the World series, Physical Ecology of North American Desert Plants, and Forest Ecosystems: Analysis at Multiple Scales.

New Directions

This article was written with the specialist in mind. By specialist, someone who is either in the field of remote sensing, land use management, or spectral analysis. From the abstract,
multiangle measurement enable retrieval of physical scene characteristics, such as aerosol type, cloud morphology and height, and land cover (e.g., vegetation canopy type), providing improved albedo accuracies as well as compositional, morphological and structural information that facilitates addressing many key climate, environmental, and ecological issues…With the advent of a new generation of global imaging spectroradiometers capable of acquiring simultaneous visible/near-IR multiangle observations, namely, the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer-2, the Polarization and Directionality of the Earth’s Reflectances instrument, and the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer, both qualitatively new approaches as well as quantitative improvements in accuracy are achievable that exploit the multiangle signals as unique and rich sources of diagnostic information.

If I hadn’t already read the previous two articles, I would have not been able to make it through the abstract and the introduction. The reason this article was chosen is that it was published in the time frame selected and the references cited.

Diner, D.J., Asner,G.P., Davies, R. & et al. (1999). New directions in Earth observing: scientific applications of multiangle remote sensing. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80 (11), 2209-2228. Retrieved February 3, 2009 from Google Scholar.

This article was the mother-load of references. There were a total of 143 individual references of which 125 were from journals. The remaining references were from algorithm documents, conference/symposium papers, books, reports and a dissertation. Three of the journals had at least fifteen different articles cited: Journal Geophysical Research, IEEE Transactions on GeoScience & Remote Sensing, and Remote Sensing Environment.

Summary and Analysis

Scientists generally prefer to get their information from journals than from books (see Grefsheim & Rankin above). Journals have greater currency over books; moreover, with so many journals now available online one can potentially find information even faster. The number of journals cited was not surprising; however, the type of books cited was interesting. The books all tended to be either encyclopedic in nature or methodology directed. On further reflection, perhaps it is not so surprisingly as with any rapidly advancing field books date quickly. So can we see a pattern in literature use among these three articles? Journals are the primary source of information for the field of remote sensing with Remote Sensing Environment being the most cited individual journal. Books provide background, methodology and supplemental information. Papers from conferences and symposiums are also used and would provide the same currency as journal articles. A systematic search for literature within the field of remote sensing would start with journals of that field. Other fields would include ecology, land management use, physics (spectroanalysis), and geography.

Next posting – What’s happening at the Carnegie Airborne Observatory?