Developing a web-based identification guide and ecological resource for diatoms of western North America

Participants
Sarah Spaulding, PI, USGS
David Lubinski, Programmer & Database Design, INSTAAR, CU-Boulder
Julie Kinsey, Intern U.S. EPA Region 8
Marina Potapova, Diatom Taxonomist, Acad. of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
Tisza Bell, Graduate Student, Environmental Studies Program, CU-Boulder
Jo Thompson, Project Officer, U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development

Project Review Board
Mark Edlund, St. Croix Watershed Research Station
Patrick Kociolek, California Academy of Sciences
Kalina Manoylov, Michigan State University
Karl Hermann, U.S. EPA Region 8
Blake Beyea, Colorado Dept. of Health and Public Environment

The Problem
Although diatoms are accepted and robust indicators for monitoring and assessing freshwater ecosystems in western North America (i.e., U.S. EPA Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program –EMAP, USGS National Water Quality Assessment –NAWQA), their full potential has been hindered by nomenclatural inconsistencies and sparse information on ecological tolerances. Incomplete taxonomic resources for this region have sometimes forced analysts to use keys from distant areas, including Europe. Inconsistent diatom data between and among many federal, state, and university programs have hampered regional biological and ecological assessments. Existing processes for addressing nomenclatural consistency (ie Integrated Taxonomic Information System, ITIS) tend to focus on the naming system of organisms rather than taxonomic and autecologic identification. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP) maintains an image database, yet this resource is not intended, nor adequate, for diatom species identification. As a result, existing taxonomic resources are incomplete and no publicly accessible resource is available to allow analysts to produce accurate data.

The Solution
To assist states, tribes and other public organizations in using diatom data collected from western North America, U.S. EPA - through the REMAP program - has funded the development of a web resource that integrates taxonomic and ecological diatom data using existing permanent diatom slides prepared for the EPA Western EMAP. This web resource will provide a tool that promotes internally consistent and publicly accessible taxonomic data. Basic taxonomic and autecological research will be compiled for a variety of taxa, and presented in a format that highlights each species on its own individual web page. Initially, 100 species will be included in the web resource, but the site is being designed to handle expansion to the more than 1200 taxa reported in the region. This effort is not intended to be static, but part of an ongoing, changing body of work. In that sense, we will put out the best of our knowledge, but realize that we will learn more in the future and grow to accommodate those changes. The new web resource builds upon our previous NSF-funded website Antarctic Freshwater Diatoms.

Coming soon: A list of major groups chosen for inclusion in the initial 100 species and the rationale for those choices. We might also post a copy of our "Project Plan"... stay tuned.

We'd really appreciate your feedback
We continue to design the new website and are looking for more feedback on our wireframe prototype (a set of semi-interactive schematic drawings). We thank the folks who commented on previous versions; you had many many good ideas that we tried to incorporate into the latest version.

We refer to each of the key pages in the prototype as a "wireframe." Each wireframe is intentionally kept as a crude black and white sketch (low fidelity) to help us focus on the content and functionality of the site rather its style (ie colors, font types, images). You could consider this stage like the storyboarding process used to make many kinds of movies. In that case, simple diagrams are used to plan out the important shots before filming.

To ensure that you see links to the latest version below, please refresh/reload your browser.

Current Version 03 December 2007
wireframe prototype in three formats
     • PDF format (~1MB, good for printing and reviewing offline).
     • Website - small font
     • Website - large font

Changes since 27 Oct version:

  • Even less cluttered homepage
  • Taxa in "major groups" instead of "morphologic groups"
  • Removed community news section
  • Focus on genera for western US instead of all of US
  • many other changes and tweaks

Changes since 08 Oct version:

  • Less cluttered homepage
  • Genera and Species sections combined into one Taxa section
  • many tweaks

Changes since 12 Sept version:

  • added homepage
  • added a news/events section
  • added an updates section
  • added details to the references section
  • added details to the help section
  • many small tweaks throughout site

All wireframe prototypes are semi-interactive
The following elements can be clicked upon to navigate between wireframes/pages:
(1) Banner at the top will take you back to this page. In the real site, it will take you to the About/Home page.
(2) Horizontal navigation bar "buttons" at top, such as "Genera"
(3) All tabs
(4) Blue text links marked with a yellow star.
(5) Images marked with a yellow star.

If you're using Adobe's Reader or Acrobat to view the PDF version, consider using the View > Full Screen Mode; it will hide the distracting toolbars, etc. Hit the Esc key to return to regular mode.

Please send your comments
Any and all comments about our wireframe prototype would be helpful at this early design stage. Whatever is easiest for you would be fine. You could send us your comments in an email or Word attachment (please reference the wireframe title or page number when appropriate). Or just print the PDF, write your comments directly on the paper and send to us by regular mail.

If making many detailed comments, please consider downloading the PDF and add your comments directly to the file with Adobe Acrobat, or similar PDF authoring program (ie, Mac OS X: built-in Preview app or third-party Skim app; Windows: free Foxit Reader or similar). For most programs, select some text, right click, and choose commenting/annotation/notes. Users of Skim for OS X should send us an export, not just the working PDF file (File > Export....Select "PDF With Embedded Notes"), and let us know that you added your notes with Skim. Adobe Reader is free for all platforms and can be used to add comments with one big caveat: you need to do all your commenting in one session. You can save as many times as you want, but once you quit Reader, you can no longer add comments upon re-opening the file (you can thank Abobe for that limitation). If you want to give us more comments you'll need to re-download the file, add new comments with Reader, and then send us your two PDFs.

To maximize the usefulness of your comments, it would be helpful to know a little bit about your background and how you think our site might be able to help you.

Please send all comments to Sarah.Spaulding@Colorado.EDU. Thanks!