Ensuring reliable datasets for environmental models and forecasts

In this paper we illustrate the use of an analytic web to represent the scientific process of constructing estimates of ecosystem water flux from data gathered by a complex, real-time multi-sensor network. We use Little-JIL, a high-level process definition language, to precisely and accurately capture the analytical processes involved. We believe that incorporation of this approach into existing tools and evolving metadata specifications (such as EML) will yield significant benefits to science. These benefits include: complete and accurate representations of scientific processes; support for rigorous evaluation of such processes for logical and statistical errors and for propagation of measurement error; and assurance of dataset reliability for developing sound models and forecasts of environmental change.