Sudden Urge for Environmental Informatics Reading

August 9, 2010 4:11 PM

Good sources of interesting articles in the area of environmental informatics?

So, my summer's work has on the side exposed me to the world of environmental informatics (or what could be termed as that).

For example: interactions/reactions/chain reactions between various species, and other naturally occurring biological matter, modelling of these processes (statistically/mathematically even), environmental processes (soil, above soil), etc. I'm wide open as far as what I am looking for right now, and would like some material so that I can narrow my target(s) of interest.

In some cases, I would also be looking for articles/studies that detail the "mechanics" of the environment, and how they are evolving as we speak.

Hopefully I've provided a good idea of what I am looking for. If you would like to link to some articles that require some journal subscription, my university might have it on hand I could search for it there. Thus please feel free to recommend it.

Thanks!!!

Bonus: data sets worth looking at?

posted by JoeXIII007 to Science & Nature (2 answers total)

"articles/studies that detail the "mechanics" of the environment" is basically the whole science of ecology. Ecoinformatics is a sort of subtechnique of ecological research that is focused on merging massive databases to look for patterns. You could use ecoinformatics to do population or community ecology research but to me it sounds like what you're describing as your interest is more specifically ecosystem ecology and/or ecosystem modeling, with or without ecoinformatics.

The classic ecology textbook that uses the ecosystem approach to the science is Eugene Odum's Fundamental of Ecology.

Because I'm a stream ecosystem ecologist and your interest seems broad, here is one of my very favorite papers that seems to fit a lot of your criteria:
Taylor, B.W., A.S. Flecker, and R.O. Hall Jr. 2006. Loss of a harvested fish species disrupts carbon flow in a diverse tropical river. Science 313:833-836. Pretty much every college/university has online access to Science, but I'd be glad to send you a PDF if you don't. It is an elegant study that shows quite clearly the ecosystem consequences of removing a single species.

There's plenty more where that came from...
posted by hydropsyche at 4:53 PM on August 9, 2010

Oh and now I see that you're actually studying informatics. So, if you really want to know about ecoinformatics, rather than ecology in general, NCEAS is for all intents and purposes the birthplace and continued home of ecoinformatics in the US.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:33 PM on August 9, 2010