Meeting the Challenge of Data Stewardship through Community Partnership and Practice: Examples from the USGS (Invited)
Abstract
The collection and maintenance of long-term natural science data is a hallmark of the USGS mission that has become an increasingly complex challenge to meet. Several examples of different aspects of data stewardship illustrate issues and solutions that require community partnerships and agreement on standards and practices to meet the requirements of access, interoperability, and preservation. The USGS National Geologic and Geophysical Data Preservation Program, established 3 years ago, is making important strides in developing and implementing basic data preservation practices and tools across all the geological surveys in the U.S. including preserving data at risk, creating inventories of data, proper curation and cataloguing of data and materials, and creating a universal digital catalogue that will provide discovery and accessibility. For the past 10 years, the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program at the USGS has worked with geologic mappers from diverse organizations to establish use of a common map symbology and a community developed geologic map data model. Together these two practices can facilitate the interoperability of this most fundamental but highly individual representation of geologic science. Since 2007, a broad consortium of partners is working together to form the Geosciences Information Network, a virtual network that takes advantage of informatics tools, mark-up languages, web services, and open sources standards to create a potentially unlimited virtual network of information. Using the digital data assets of all the geological surveys across the US and comprising partnerships with ESRI, Microsoft, OneGeology, GEON, and numerous others, this effort strives to use community developed practices and tools and cutting edge technology to bring multi-disciplinary data together while preserving provanance. Finally, the USGS is in the process of developing an Integrated Science Data Environment to preserve and make accessible USGS hydrological, biological, geographic, and geologic data through a service oriented architecture, incorporating a diverse array of partnerships, networks, and tools.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFMIN44A..01G
- Keywords:
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- 1916 INFORMATICS / Data and information discovery