About COASTER
The Customized Online Aggregation & Summarization Tool for
Environmental Rasters (COASTER) system (www.COASTERdata.net) was
developed by Yellowstone Ecological Research Center (YERC) (http://www.yellowstoneresearch.org/) to produce
outputs useful for visualizing spatial and temporal patterns within environmental
datasets and as variables in statistical models. This project is designed to meet the
information needs of end-user communities interested in decision-support for
responding to environmental impacts driven by climate change, land-use activities,
and disturbance. The primary intent of COASTER is to greatly reduce the data storage
and computational capabilities required to create user-defined covariates, thereby
expanding the number of users able to readily utilize powerful environment datasets
in research and decision making. COASTER accomplishes this goal by enabling users to
process large and cumbersome datasets, using a set of pre-established functions, to
simply and cost-effectively create output customized to meet their needs. Notable
features of COASTER include a concise yet effective user interface, a flexible set of
functions capable of producing a wide range of outputs, a design applicable to many
types of raster datasets, a scalable system architecture that can easily accommodate
additional datasets, and results formatted for seamless integration within most GIS
and remote sensing software packages.
COASTER Documentation
A detailed description of the COASTER system is freely available
here: COASTER white paper PDF
Acknowledgements
Project Design:
Daniel Weiss
Programmers:
Katie Gibson, Charlie Sojka, and Daniel
Weiss
Data Providers:
TOPS datasets - Rama Nemani, Andy Michaelis, and Forrest Melton
(NASA Ames Research Center, http://ecocast.arc.nasa.gov/)
TOPOMET datasets - Jared Oyler (University of Montana,
Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group)
NCEP/NCAR, NCEP/NARR, and NOAA CPC datasets - National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Earth System Research Laboratory, Physical
Sciences Division – http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/
Percent Surface Water (PSW) Dataset and CASA Express for Wetlands and Mountains - Yellowstone Ecological Research Center (YERC)
Special Thanks:
The USGS Cryospheric Studies Project (Frank Urban) and
the University of Alaska Fairbanks Water and Environment Research Center for
meteorological base station input data used in creating the TOPS Alaska
datasets.
Jennifer L. Jenkins (Arctic Landscape Conservation
Cooperative) for her efforts in finding meteorological input
data for Alaska.
Current and former YERC employees who contributed
their energy to this project including Robert Crabtree, Jennifer Sheldon, Brandt
Winkelman, Aaron Doern, Steve Jay, and Deanna Tarum.
All COASTER users who tested the beta version of the
system and provided their valuable feedback.
Funding Sources
NASA Ecological Forecasting (RRSC-SHC) NNX08AM70G
NASA Biological Response to Climate (A.30 BioClim) NNX11AK90G
NSF Field Station and Marine Lab (FSML) 0829495
NSF EPSCoR Track 1 MUS System PG12-67600-01
Contact Information
Questions regarding COASTER should be directed to Daniel Weiss
at: weiss AT YellowstoneResearch.org