Bowling Green, Ky. -A ground-breaking research paper on GeoProfile metadata from climate stations is being published in the International Journal of Climatology, a highly respected publication of the British Royal Meteorological Society.

Dr. Rezaul Mahmood and Dr. Stuart Foster of the Kentucky Climate Center at Western Kentucky University worked with geography major David W. Logan of Lancaster, Ky., in 2003-2004 to develop a new approach to archiving, visualizing and communicating climatological station metadata.

Metadata are essentially data about data. They describe how, when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data are formatted.

The research is innovative in its use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) tools to visualize and communicate climate information. Using techniques developed with students in the Kentucky Climate Center and in GIS courses, the research results suggest that this methodology could and should be adopted nationally and internationally for all meteorological networks.

“Publishing in a prestigious international journal like the IJC demonstrates the high quality of faculty and student research at WKU,” said Geography and Geology Department Head Dr. David Keeling. “The research that Dr. Foster and Dr. Mahmood have done with geography student David Logan is another example of how students can play a major role in developing new ideas and approaches that not only benefit student learning but also lead to jointly authored publications such as this one.”

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For information, contact Rezaul Mahmood at (270) 745-5979.

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