PLACING COLVILLE RIVER DELTA RESEARCH ON THE INTERNET IN A DIGITAL LIBRARY FORMAT

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1 PLACING COLVILLE RIVER DELTA RESEARCH ON THE INTERNET IN A DIGITAL LIBRARY FORMAT H. Jesse Walker 1, Lynn Hadden 2 1. Dept. of Geography, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA hwalker@lsu.edu 2. Computing Services Center, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA lynnh@lsu.edu Abstract The Colville River Delta, Alaska has been the subject of research by teams from Louisiana State University since Although nearly 200 articles, abstracts, reports, theses and dissertations about the delta have been produced, much of the research is still unpublished. In 1997, Louisiana State University initiated a long-term project devoted to the establishment of a digital library by utilizing Colville River Delta research materials. The objective is to make several thousand slides, black and white photographs, aerial photographs, diagrams, maps, and tables as well as publications available to students, researchers and other interested people via the internet. To date (September, 1997) more than 1000 items (including a number of theses, dissertations and published articles) have been digitized and are available through the URL The procedures used and the infrastructure (e.g., equipment and computer programs) needed to support a digital library of arctic materials are being standardized at Louisiana State University. Introduction In 1996, Louisiana State University (LSU) opened a multimillion dollar computer center on its Baton Rouge campus. The Division of Computing Services, which is housed in the new center, initiated plans to establish a digital library that can store materials in an electronic format and can efficiently and effectively manipulate large research collections. Once in an electronic format, material will be disseminated on the WWW for the use of scientists, engineers, administrators, students and other interested individuals. LSU administrators decided to initiate the digital library project by utilizing the arctic research materials accumulated during the past 40 years at the University by its faculty, their students and colleagues. The project was begun by concentrating on the research centered around the Colville River Delta in arctic Alaska. Work on the project was begun in July, 1996 with the assistance of graduate students, student workers, computer technicians and librarians. THE COLVILLE RIVER AND ITS DELTA The Colville River drains an area of 53,200 km 2 and has a length of 603 km. Its basin, with a perimeter of 1650 km, includes parts of three physiographic units. The Arctic Coastal Plain, within which the Colville River Delta is located, is the smallest of the three with 10 per cent of the total. Elevations range from sea level to 2324 m in the Brooks Range. Despite (or partly because of) its high latitude, it is the largest river in Alaska that is not glacier-fed. The basin is asymmetrical with only short tributaries flowing south into the main channel. The bulk of the drainage begins in the Brooks Range and flows north across the foothills before entering the main river (Walker 1973). The Colville River has created a roughly-triangular delta with sides of 32, 37 and 42 km long and with an area that is nearly 1% of the size of its drainage basin. From the main channel a number of distributaries branch off to the northwest. The largest of these in the Nechelic Channel which flows past the region's only town (Nuiqsut, which was founded in 1973) (Fig. 1). The actual number of distributaries varies with stage and through time. At normal stage, water exits the delta through 34 different mouths, although there are more than 5000 different routes it can take before entering the Arctic Ocean (Walker 1983). The entire drainage basin, including the Delta, is characterized by arctic climatic conditions. Winters are H. Jesse Walker, Lynn Hadden 1103

2 charge and suspended load (mineral, biotic and chemical) variations (Fig. 1) (see e.g. Arnborg et al. 1967). More than 300 echosounding profiles were obtained. Riverbank erosion measurements, which have been continued to the present, were begun. The first presentation of Colville Delta information to the international community was at the First International Permafrost Conference in Purdue in It dealt with the relationship between permafrost, ice-wedges and riverbank erosion and introduced the Russian term for thermoerosional niche (Fig. 3) into the English literature (Walker et al. 1966). During the rest of the 1960's, additional data on discharge, suspended load and bank erosion were accumulated. Beginning in 1971, the research expanded to include the river's impact on the nearshore areas of the subaqueous delta. Surveys, made by helicopters (1971 and 1973), allowed the determination of the volume of water and suspended load that moved over and under the sea ice at the front of the Delta. Salinity, temperature and suspended load profiles were made beneath the ice at sea-ice stations, some occupied as many as seven times during breakup flooding. By those measurements, it was possible to use the advance of the freshwater wedge beneath the ice to determine the volumes Figure 1. The Colville River Delta showing the hydrologic stations occupied in The map was published before the town of Nuiqsut was founded. long and cold; summers, short, cool and windy. The temperature and precipitation regimes insure that during eight or more months of the year nearly all surfaces are snow covered and that the vegetation is of the tundra variety. Further, the area is underlain by permafrost and supports ice wedges which frequently are evidenced at the surface in the form of polygons (Fig. 2). THE NATURE OF THE RESEARCH MATERIALS BEING PLACED ON THE DIGITAL LIBRARY Colville River Delta research began in 1960, with the first field trip occurring during the summer of This research, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and supported in the field by the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, Barrow, Alaska was conducted under the auspices of the Coastal Studies Institute at LSU. Because the Colville River and its delta, up to that time, had only rarely been mentioned in the literature and that mostly in explorer's journals (e.g. Stefansson 1912), it was practically unknown from a scientific standpoint. During the early 1960's, Colville River Delta research was mainly centered on the morphology of the Delta's distributaries and riverbanks and the river's stage, dis- Figure 2. Colville River Delta surface features showing several types of icewedge polygons The 7th International Permafrost Conference

3 Figure 3. Thermoerosional niche beneath peat block. Two days after the photo was taken, the block broke off at the ice wedge. of water reaching the sea. Because some of the floodwater progressed over the nearshore ice, before draining through pressure-ridge cracks, some of its suspended load was deposited on top of the ice (Fig. 4). Beginning in 1981, Colville Delta research was sponsored by the North Slope Borough's CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) in connection with its dredge program. Baseline studies were made near the head of the Colville Delta in 1981 and monitoring of the dredged areas continued until Summaries of the results were presented to the NSB in seven annual reports (Walker 1994). Although the precise number of objects from the LSU collection available for digitization has not yet been determined, it will number several thousand. This total will be selected from about 15,000 slides, 10,000 black and white prints, 2000 aerial photographs, 2000 data sheets, 20 years of field notes, 500 diagrams and graphs, 200 publications, reports, theses and dissertations and several hours of motion pictures. PROCEDURES FOR PREPARING THE COLVILLE DELTAMATERIALS FOR THE DIGITAL LIBRARY There are several steps involved in describing and cataloguing digital library objects, in this case, those materials representative of the Colville River Delta as described above. The criteria for selection includes such things as the age of an object, its uniqueness (e.g. aerial photographs) and its relevance to the overall collection (Wactlar et al. 1996). Basic information is then entered into a master file list in a processing database. Information includes a file name (library object code), Figure 4. Map of the distribution and grain size of sediment deposited on the sea ice at the front of the Colville Delta in the type of item and a description. The object is then scanned, and after scanning information about the size of each file it is added into the master file. For image objects two gif (graphical information) files are created a small thumbnail (for browsing) and a larger reference file for research purposes. If the object is text, a third file is created in pdf (portable document format). The scanning can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a week (e.g. of monographs). Once the object file is created, it is then catalogued by librarians. Cataloguing data includes defining topical subjects, geographic subjects, uncontrolled terms, titles, authors, publishers, dates, object types, relation to other digital library objects, language and coordinates. Traditional library cataloguing procedures using USMARC formats are a very time consuming process. Because of the volume of data to be catalogued in a Digital Library, using these same procedures would be prohibitive. The Dublin Core is the consensus on a core set of meta data elements to describe networked resources. This consensus was reached by 52 professionals from librarianship, computer science, text encoding and other related areas at a workshop sponsored by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). These Dublin Core meta data elements can be mapped to USMARC format. Use of the H. Jesse Walker, Lynn Hadden 1105

4 Figure 5. Example of a computer screen depicting the desire to search for images that relate to arctic regions. Dublin Core minimizes the time and cost involved in creating meta data records on very large digital collections. Use of this meta data allows for access through current search engines while remaining flexible enough to accommodate emerging internet search engines which may take advantage of HTML <meta> tags and SGML DTD's. At this point the librarians also verify copyrights and obtain any permissions needed. After the cataloguing entry is complete, data are entered into tables through programs written by an applications analyst. The search engine written for the digital library accesses information in these tables and the results are then available to the user. The applications analyst is constantly updating the programs that drive the digital library in order to meet new user requirements or handle new object types. These steps and the infrastructure in terms of equipment and computer programs to support the digital library were established through LSU's pilot project on the Colville River Delta. Conclusions To date (September, 1997), more than 1000 objects have been scanned and are available on the internet via the URL The Colville Delta materials presently on the internet can be searched for general information about the arctic environment by teachers, students, librarians and the lay public. They can also be searched for specific information relevant to research on arctic delta topics such as ice-wedge polygons, bank erosion and hydrology. For example, a person wanting images dealing with Arctic regions that are stored in the digital library would begin by selecting the keyword "arctic regions" and then by selecting the object type "images". This procedure will return all images stored in the library that deal with arctic regions between 1948 and 1996 (Fig. 5). Further, the digital library provides the ability to compare and contrast aerial photographs from different time periods in order to determine morphologic change The 7th International Permafrost Conference

5 Data about the Colville River Delta that, heretofore, would have only been available in a physical archival form are now available to anyone with internet access. References Arnborg, L., Walker, H. and Peippo, J. (1967). Suspended load in the Colville River, Alaska, Geografiska Annaler, 49A, Stefansson, V. (1912). My Life with the Eskimo. The Macmillan Co., New York (538pp.). Wactlar, H.D., Kanade, T., Smith, M. and Stevens, S. (1969). Intellient access to digital video informedia project. Digital Library Initiative: Carnegie Mellon Univ. Walker, H.J. (1973). Morphology of the North Slope. In Britton, M.E. (ed.), Alaskan Arctic Tundra. Arctic Institute of North America, Washington, D.C., Tech. Paper 25, pp Walker, H.J. (1983). The delta's distributaries. In Walker, H.J. (ed.), The Colville River Delta Report 33G. North Slope Borough, Barrow, AK. (41 pp). Walker, H.J. (1994). Environmental impact of dredging in arctic Alaska ( ). Arctic. 47, Walker, H.J., Arnborg, L. and Peippo, J. (1966). Permafrost and ice-wedge effect on riverbank erosion. In Proceedings 1st International Permafrost Conference on Permafrost, Lafayette. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., pp H. Jesse Walker, Lynn Hadden 1107