Vol. 82, No. 3, January 16, 2001
Release of BOREAS CD-ROM Set
K. F. Huemmrich, F. G. Hall, D. R. Landis and J. A. Newcomer
For more information, contact K. F. Huemmrich, Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Code 923.4, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, Md., USA
Copyright 2001 American Geophysical Union
Introduction
The BOReal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) was an international, interdisciplinary field campaign to improve the understanding of (1) boreal forest ecology, (2) the interactions between the boreal forest and the atmosphere, (3) how the interactions are affected by climate change, and (4) how satellite imagery can be used to monitor the interactions [Sellers, et al., 1997]. BOREAS focused its efforts on a 1000-km x 1000-km region in central Canada (Figure 1). BOREAS research efforts involved 85 science teams from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Russia, and Japan. Over 300 people participated in the field campaigns that occurred between 1993 and 1996.
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A set of 12 CD-ROMs (Compact Disk-Read Only Memory) containing key data sets from the BOREAS is now freely available by contacting the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) (http://www.daac.ornl.gov/).
Types of BOREAS Data Available
The organization of the BOREAS science teams and the types of data included on the CD-ROM set are:
The CD-ROM set is one of two components of the overall BOREAS data archive. The second component is an on line system at the ORNL DAAC, one of eight DAACs within the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). The CD-ROM set contains all of the point data sets; however, only selected image data sets are included due to resource limitations. All point data are stored in American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) files.
With a few exceptions, the image and GIS data are stored as binary images, compressed using GZip(tm). For the image data that are not included, an ASCII inventory file is provided that lists all the images that are available through the ORNL DAAC. All of the data sets have accompanying documentation files, which have been published as a NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Technical Memoranda (TM) series (NASA/TM-2000-209891) (http://www.sti.nasa.gov/) to serve as literature references for the data.
Along with the data and documentation, the CD-ROMs include a World Wide Web (Web) browser, image decompression, and image display software for MacOS, Windows95+, and UNIX systems.
Using HTML for the CD-ROM Interface
The BOREAS CD-ROM set uses a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) interface to guide the user to data of interest. The interface provides an introduction to BOREAS, a picture- and map-based tour of the sites in Canada, preliminary conclusions, and multiple indexes to the data. The challenge in creating the interface was to produce something that would work on multiple platforms and had a good possibility of being viable many years hence. Using HTML allowed the creation of a multi-platform interface that operates on MacOS, Windows95+, and multiple UNIX versions by using a Web browser in "local mode," with no Web server running.
Since Web browsing software will be updated and distributed by commercial vendors, we expect that some form of HTML will still operate years from now, thus insuring that the interface will continue to work as operating systems evolve. All the user has to do is download new browser software when it is available.
The BOREAS Information System
The BOREAS Information System (BORIS) was tasked with transforming the large volume of data contained in 266 individual data sets into a well-documented and stable archive that would be accessible worldwide. Because the BOREAS research effort was of limited duration, BORIS could not be a long-term on line archive. Instead, BORIS was designed to prepare the data for transfer to the ORNL DAAC and to produce a set of CD-ROMs. The focus on interdisciplinary research at multiple spatial scales drove the design of the data archive.
Data Publication: Creating a Usable Archive
To be fully useful for global change research, it was required that the data sets pass the National Research Council's "20-year test;" that is, the data needed to be usable 20 years from now by a scientist unfamiliar with the project and data. To meet this test, BORIS had to consistently label parameters, complete data set documentation, and cross-reference the data in both time and space.
The archive also had to describe the overall project structure, measurement sites, data collection procedures, instruments, and analysis techniques. In essence, BORIS needed to produce a self-contained compilation of the BOREAS project and the data---the digital equivalent of a reference book. This process, referred to as Data Publication [Meeson and Strebel, 1998], is analogous to the publication of books or journals, with the scientists acting as authors (providing the data and documentation), and the BORIS staff being the editor and publisher (organizing and quality checking the data, editing the documentation).
BORIS staff adopted and followed consistent practices in integrating and documenting the data. Data set documentation was written in the EOSDIS Data Set Guide Document format for consistency and ease of integration at the ORNL DAAC. A series of final reviews for data and documentation were conducted, which included reviews by the science teams, BORIS and ORNL staff, and a technical editor. This final set of activities can be likened to the final content and format checks performed by the editor/publisher in scientific literature publication. When completed, the staff indexed all of the data files and generated keyword and parameter lists. The BORIS staff also created science group overview documents that gave a short introduction and overview of all the data sets in each area.
Publication on CD-ROM and Online
The decision to publish the data on CD-ROM in addition to the online ORNL DAAC system was made for a number of reasons. First, Web sites and online systems are changeable; they can be and are regularly altered and can even disappear without warning. This means that the data stored at these sites are susceptible to changing over time
Second, online systems require continuous hardware and software support, and thus a continuous maintenance cost. Third, scientific research requires a data source that is stable over time and can be referenced so that others can repeat and further verify the work.
Fourth, the interdisciplinary nature and short time period of BOREAS made it advantageous to store the key project data in an integrated and cohesive form, where large volumes of related data could be made available to the user without time-consuming network downloads. CD-ROMs provided solutions for many of these concerns, providing a stable, inexpensive, and broadband media for data publication. The distribution of hundreds of copies of the CD-ROMs practically guarantees the survival of the data regardless of what happens with on line systems.
Access to BOREAS Data
The CD-ROMs and data are available from the ORNL DAAC:
ORNL DAAC User Services Office
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
P.O. Box 2008, MS 6407
Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6407 USA
Tel: +1-865-241-3952
Fax: +1-865-574-4665
E-mail: ornldaac@ornl.gov
Web site: http://www.daac.ornl.gov/
References
Meeson, B. W. and D. E. Strebel, The publication analogy: A conceptual framework for scientific information systems, Remote Sensing Reviews, 16 (4), 255-292, 1998.
Sellers, P. J., et al., BOREAS in 1997: Experiment overview, scientific results and future directions, J. Geophys. Res. 102 (D24), 28731-28770, 1997.
