[Babase] weather station abbreviations and times

Susan Alberts alberts at duke.edu
Thu Jan 15 15:05:36 EST 2009


Hi Tabby, thanks for your work on this, see below.

> We have the following weather station names listed in our database  
> currently.  Some of the names are quite cumbersome so an  
> abbreviation would be preferable (with the coding defined in a  
> support table of station locations, especially the A vs B locations  
> that show up a few times).  I'm going to propose the following codes  
> for each station.  Please let me know if these would be acceptable.   
> I think the Baboon Camp locations are particularly confusing and I'm  
> not sure I've coded them correctly to make appropriate  
> distinctions ....mainly because I probably don't know enough about  
> them.
> Anyway, the convention I've used it that the first character  
> signifies the location, the second is for the A or B designation and  
> the third is to distinguish the Upper and Lower gauges we used for a  
> while.
>
>
> Baboon Camp A                  CA
> Baboon Camp B                  CB     Baboon Camp B: lower  
> gauge         CBL  (not really sure what to do with the upper and  
> lower ones here...do you want them to show up separately?
> Baboon Camp B: upper gauge         CBU
> Group Ranch Campsite A               RA
> Group Ranch Campsite B               RB
> Ol Tukai                                       O
> (blank)                        There are a number of blank stations  
> from the 70s.  How to code these or do you think you can recall  
> their locations?

I have no trouble with the abbreviations themselves but I don't  
actually know what they refer to. What is the Group Ranch Campsite  
location as opposed to baboon camp location? Probably Jeanne just  
needs to explain these to me, or else you would need to send me the  
time periods that they refer to. IN fact if you send me the time  
periods in which they were used I would probably know right away what  
you are talking about and can give better input.

With respect to upper and lower, I would think that we definitely want  
to enter the locations separately if we enter both locations. The  
other choice would be only enter one location. As I understood it,  
this was initiated to see how much error there might be in any given  
temperature gauge, and we did learn something from it, so this would  
document it. But Jeanne should give input here.

> Another question:  we have a number of blank times for some early  
> precipitation readings.  The data type doesn't really lend itself to  
> using NULLS, so is there a time that would be acceptable for input  
> for these readings?  Were readings typically done at one time of the  
> day (perhaps early morning) so  you would feel comfortable  
> populating this with 06:00 or something other than NULLS?

I would recommend taking the average time of the readings from that  
period and assigning that time to them -- at least this would work for  
me. Jeanne? Perhaps we also need a column indicating that this is a  
"dummy time".

Susan

>
>
>
> Thanks,
> Tabby
>
> -- 
> Tabby Fenn
> Research Assistant
>
> Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
> 401 Guyot Hall
> Princeton University
> Princeton, NJ  08544
>
> 609 258-6898 (Ph)
> 609 258-2712 (Fx)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Babase mailing list
> Babase at www.eco.princeton.edu
> http://www.eco.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/babase

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Susan Alberts, Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338,  
Durham NC 27708 USA,  Phone 919-660-7272, FAX 919-660-7293, alberts at duke.edu






More information about the Babase mailing list