WaterML R package for managing ecological experiment data on a CUAHSI HydroServer

We present the design and development of a new WaterML R package that provides access to the Consortium of Universities for Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) Hydrologic Information System (HIS) HydroServer as a means for storing and managing data. The new WaterML R package is presented in terms of its functional requirements and design, with the express goal of providing support for four core web methods defined by the HydroServer WaterOneFlow web services specification. The system is tested in the context of data collected as part of a large ecological manipulation experiment. The resulting system allows research scientists to use a familiar statistical computation environment, R, together with the open source HydroServer software (for data archival and sharing). We also developed a new HydroServer data upload web service to facilitate data upload to a PHP version of HydroServer called HydroServer Lite directly from the WaterML R package presented here. Using the WaterML R package, the user can retrieve and analyze data from HydroServers of multiple organizations that are listed in the CUAHSI Water Data Center catalog and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems data catalog of the World Meteorological Organization. The new HydroServer Lite data upload API simplifies the upload of data to HydroServer Lite directly from the R environment.