Site Naming
All site names will have the same two letter descriptors and an appended river kilometer. For instance, the IBYC monitoring station is located at SO-3 and the Middle Bridge YSI monitoring station is located at PR-18.5. This descriptor will either be an abbreviation describing the station or a river kilometer distance that describes its location along one of the rivers in the Plum Island Ecosystem. Please use the River Kilometer Image as an aid in determining names for sampling locations. The image is color-coded to show which two-letter site descriptor code should be used in station naming. The convention that has been established for determining locations on a river is based upon river kilometer, where the mouth of Plum Island Sound is the starting point at 0.0 km. River kilometer markings are clearly labeled in this image as is the 0.0 km starting point in the Sound.
File Naming
The PIE LTER Excel Metadata Template file contains both a sheet for metadata and data. The resulting combined metadata and data file should be named starting with a three letter acronym of the main research theme of the data set (see table below). A second two/three letter acronym is appended that describes the research site (see table below). A descriptor is then appended that briefly describes the dataset. For instance, dissolved oxygen transect data from the Parker River is named "EST-PR-O2", and tidal-creek nutrient data from the long-term experiments is named "LTE-TC-NUT". The data-manager may edit file names as appropriate. These same naming methods apply for the PIE LTER site names.
Major Research Theme Acronyms
Watershed | WAT |
Marsh | MAR |
Water Column | EST |
Benthos | BEN |
Consumers | HTL |
Models | MOD |
Long Term Experiments | LTE |
Short Term Projects & Experiments | STP |
Geographic Information Systems | GIS |
Monitoring | MON |
Some Site Descriptors
Parker River | PR |
Rowley River | RO |
Ipswich River | IP |
Mill River | MI |
Egypt River | EG |
Muddy River | MU |
Marsh Fertilization | MF |
Plot-level Marsh Fertilization | MP |
Tidal Creeks | TC |
Various sites | VA |
Plum Island Sound | SO |
Throughout Plum Island estuary | PIE |
Experimentally manipulated tidal creeks | TIDE |