ROADNet concentrates on the challenges associated with building wireless networks to stream remote field data and the integrated information management system that will deliver this data in real-time to multiple users. ROADNet's field research studies are existing and ongoing sensor deployment and data collection efforts that benefit from wireless connectivity and integrated data management. Collectively, these projects provide an invaluable, heterogeneous test bed for developing the proposed integrated information network. These studies, their Principal Investigators, and the host of independent researchers, policymakers, natural resource managers and educators who use the network's data products, provide the support and funding required to continue network operations after the expiration of this particular grant.

The paucity of accessible environmental observations of sufficient duration, spatial extent, and resolution and the lack of real-time data telemetry, assimilation, and analysis are major impediments to the development of a predictive understanding of environmental variability and ecosystem change in southern California.

Geographically, the California floristic province is considered one of eighteen global biodiversity hot-spots. San Diego State University's (SDSU) Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve (SMER) and Sky Oaks Field Station contain distinct mixed-chaparral habitats characterized by high species diversity. The importance of SMER is greatly enhanced by the presence of the Santa Margarita River, a major regional riparian resource and the last naturally flowing lowland river in southern California. Both SMER and Sky Oaks support a variety of researchers who utilize in situ sensors for acquiring high-resolution time series measurements of physical, chemical, and biological variables. Sky Oaks Field Station is also the site of SDSU's Mediterranean CO2 Research Facility. The facility comprises numerous, integrated research instruments collectively studying global change issues with an emphasis on estimating carbon and water fluxes in natural areas.

SDSU's efforts to collect and disseminate environmental monitoring data to a variety of users will be significantly enhanced when the field stations are connected to the HPWREN wireless network and when the proposed integrated, real-time data management and delivery system is developed. Each of these efforts involves significant IT research challenges including those associated with networking remote sensor arrays, integrating diverse monitoring platforms, acquiring data in real-time, and archiving it continuously. It is important to demonstrate on a regional scale that multidisciplinary environmental monitoring is both practical and scalable. As a prototype, SDSU's monitoring system will reveal the challenges involved in deploying more complete environmental monitoring systems on larger scales (e.g. NEON - National Ecological Observatory Network, a NSF MRE).

SDSU aims to promote its research facilities by developing tools that enable the products of field station research to be accessed and utilized by an expanded community of users. The SDSU Field Stations Program, in partnership with the San Diego Supercomputer Center among others, is working to create a Regional Eco-Information Network, a collaborative, web-based network of researchers and community partners dedicated to applying environmental knowledge to regional decision-making. SDSU is also reforming its science curriculum and merging innovative teaching methods with cutting-edge technology. To this end, micrometeorological and carbon flux instrumentation at both Sky Oaks and SMER are accessed via the Internet to bring real-time global change technology, scientific inquiry, and field studies into the classroom. Integrated, real-time data from a multiplicity of sensors will significantly expand the utility and range of these innovative educational tools and the role of environmental education.

ROADNet GEODESY California Spatial Reference Center (CSRC)
CSRC is a public/private GPS geodesy consortium with support from NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (NGS), CalTrans, and surveyors. Building upon the database and web interface of the Scripps Orbit and Permanent Array Center (SOPAC),

We have targeted a prototypical natural hydroclimate laboratory on California's western slope of the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite National Park. Here, SIO scientists have an ongoing collaboration with the State of California and the US Geological Survey who are making real-time measurements of snow accumulation, weather, and stream discharge and stream chemistry (Yosemite segment of Facilities section). We propose to demonstrate a remote, high elevation network that will provide a continuous and ongoing view of hydrological (precipitation, snow accumulation, streamflow, stream chemistry) and meteorological (temperature, radiation, wind) fluctuations in the Merced and Tuolumne River basins of Yosemite National Park. New sites will be added to enhance the observation density and demonstrate the functionality and flexibility of the wireless network.

ROADNet OCEANOGRAPHY Coastal and Ocean Monitoring
The NSF Ocean Observations Major Research Equipment (MRE) program seeks to advance the use of ocean and coastal observatories by providing the resources needed to obtain multidisciplinary data in near-real-time using both moorings and seafloor cables [NRC Ocean Studies Board, 2000]. In implementing continuous real-time data delivery, these efforts represent an ideal towards which observational oceanography must move if it is to serve the needs of: scientists, who observe and interact with the data and with one another on-line as it is collected; modelers, who incorporate current and historical data to understand and model past, present, and future conditions in both the oceans and the underlying crust and mantle; operational forecasters, who monitor and react to conditions and/or emergency events in real-time using standard data products; the general public, who use real-time and historical measurements for educational, recreational, and/or business purposes.

Oceanographers who make moored observations, especially of subsurface variables, must now wait until the instruments have been recovered, the data have been downloaded and in some cases, compensation has been made for instrumental problems apparent only from examination of the data. This process typically adds months to years to the time required to get the data to the user groups listed above. Even when some real-time data transmission of surface variables has been implemented, transmission rates are very slow. For example, in the study of ocean surface waves, the adaptation to low data rates has required the transmission of statistical summaries of the data rather than the data themselves. This distillation limits what can be done with the data. An operational problem which has affected coastal oceanography has been the occasional loss of the telephone link from the shore data receiver nearest the mooring(s) to the laboratory during storms. This can result in an inability to provide real-time wave data when it is most needed by search and rescue personnel.

As oceanographic field capabilities expand to include remotely controlled autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), routine, real-time, rapid access to moored data will be irreplaceable in steering those vehicles into regions where their data will be most scientifically or operationally useful.

Autonomous oceanic drifters now report their position and environmental variables several times each day; the data are vital in understanding where water parcels go in the ocean. Autonomous oceanic drifters that report their GPS derived position and environmental data every few minutes would open the door to similarly effective studies of how ocean flow deforms those parcels and disperses dissolved materials. Operational forecasters may be faced with situations (such as aircraft or ship disasters, oil spill, and search and rescue missions) that require very intense data transmission rates for short periods of time; the systems proposed here will permit switching between different transmission rates either as these needs arise or during, for example, storm conditions or oil spills when particularly up to date forecasts of oceanographic and shore conditions are crucial.

The general public now makes wide use of an existing California coastal ocean wave observing and modeling system whose real-time output is available at http://cdip.ucsd.edu/cdip_htmls/history.shtml as well as the more rudimentary display of near real-time currents and winds in the Santa Barbara Channel region available at http://ccs/research/sbcsmb/sbc_home.html. (see CSS/CDIP segment of Facilities section.) The proposed new data telemetry system using HPWREN technology will make more detailed and up-to-date data available to the public in ever more readily understood forms.

ROADNet SEISMOLOGY The Virtual Seismic Network (VSN)
The most striking characteristic of the global distribution of seismographic stations is its heterogeneity. Although many agencies in many countries independently support basic research and a complex infrastructure, the data they collect unifies them all. The problem of real-time data telemetry from seismic field stations to a primary data collection center is being solved in a variety of ways in response to each network's specific mission, and is based on unique hardware, communication systems, number of stations, and areal coverage requirements. The elite, state-of-the-art networks have completely converted to digital telemetry (IGPP/ANZA part of Facilities section) but still use a single network-processing center, a relic of analog telemetry to a single site. In 1998, researchers at UCSD established a feasibility test for real-time data integration from multiple disparate seismic networks creating a Virtual Seismic Network (VSN). This project was made possible by the development of the Object Ring Buffer (ORB) software and the Antelope software package [Harvey, et al., 1998; Al-Amri and Al-Amri, 1999; von Seggern, et al., 2000]. In this test, data from eight data collection centers were integrated into one common data processing system (http://epicenter.ucsd.edu/ANZA/vsn/vsn.html). This initial test was quite successful, demonstrating that over 150 seismic stations could be accessed through the Internet and processed in real-time. At present over 550 stations distributed globally, shown in Figure 2, are being processed by the VSN [Vernon and Wallace, 1999; Vernon, 2000]. Starting with the VSN concept, we can now envision a new model of seismic observations wherein a widely distributed user community has access to ubiquitous, integrated real-time data through the Internet, a model that will become common to all environmental data.