Building the information system of the French Critical Zone Observatories network: Theia/OZCAR-IS

Abstract

The French Critical Zone research infrastructure, OZCAR-RI, gathers 20 observatories sampling various compartments of the critical zone, each having developed their own data management and distribution systems. A common information system (Theia/OZCAR IS) was built to make their in situ observation FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). The IS architecture was designed after consultation of the users, data producers and IT teams involved in data management. A common data model based on various metadata standards was defined to create information fluxes between observatories' ISs and the Theia/OZCAR IS. Controlled vocabularies were defined to develop a data discovery web portal offering a faceted search with various criteria, including variables names and categories that were harmonized in a thesaurus published on the web. This paper describes the IS architecture, the pivot data model and open-source solutions used to implement data discovery, and future steps to implement data downloading and interoperability services.

Hybrid Gravimetry to Map Water Storage Dynamics in a Mountain Catchment

“…However, it would be particularly interesting to take advantage of the international network of critical zone observatories (e.g., Anderson et al, 2008;White et al, 2015;Brantley et al, 2017;Gaillardet et al, 2018) to implement hybrid gravity monitoring on mountain watersheds with different geology and/or climate. Indeed, most of these study sites are already well-characterized in term of topography and geomorphology, and basic hydro-climatic variables-such as those used in this study-already benefit from continuous monitoring and fulfill the FAIR requirement (e.g., for the OZCAR infrastructure: see Gaillardet et al, 2018;Braud et al, 2020). These sites would therefore benefit the best from time-lapse hybrid gravity monitoring.…”

The information system of the French Peatland Observation Service: Service National d'Observation Tourbières – A valuable tool to assess the impact of global changes on the hydrology and biogeochemistry of temperate peatlands through long term monitoring

“…At the national level, the SNO Tourbières is part of OZCAR, the French research infrastructure (RI) on the critical zone (https://www.ozcar-ri.org/, Gaillardet et al, 2018), and is registered in the OZCAR information system, THEIA‐OZCAR (https://in-situ.theia-land.fr/; Braud et al, 2020). The Bernadouze site is part of an interdisciplinary observatory Observatoire Hommes‐Milieux (OHM – Laboratoire d'exellence Dispositif de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Interactions Hommes‐Milieux: LabEx DRIIHM).…”

“…At the national level, the SNO Tourbières is part of OZCAR, the French research infrastructure (RI) on the critical zone (https://www. ozcar-ri.org/, Gaillardet et al, 2018), and is registered in the OZCAR information system, THEIA-OZCAR (https://in-situ.theia-land.fr/; Braud et al, 2020 Franz et al, 2018) as an associated site since November 2019. At the international level, the methane flux of La Guette peatland is part of the FLUXNET-CH4 dataset (Knox et al, 2019;Delwiche et al, in prep.).…”

Metrology in Urban Drainage and Stormwater Management: Plug and pray

“…If these data were stored in interoperable systems, they would be known to all the systems (and operators) as soon as they are uploaded in their respective databases, thus saving a lot of time and energy. Finally, interoperability is the cornerstone of public data portals, such as Data Grand Lyon (see Section 5.5.3) or the Theia/OZCAR Information System (Braud et al, 2020). Such data portals present and give access to datasets that come from various data producers and are stored in various databases.…”