SF21A-0001 0800h
Supporting the planning for the evolution of the EOSDIS through an in-depth understanding of user requirements for NASA's world-class Earth science data system
NASA is planning for the evolution of the Earth Observation System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), a large, complex data system currently supporting over 18 operational NASA satellite missions including the flagship EOS missions: Terra, Aqua, and Aura. A critical underpinning for the evolution planning is developing thorough knowledge of the EOSDIS users and how they use the EOSDIS products in their research and or applications endeavors. This paper provides charts and tables of results from NASA studies that characterized our users, data and techniques. Using these metrics, other projects can apply NASA's 'lessons learned' to the development and operations of their data systems. In 2004, NASA undertook an intensive study of the users and usage of EOSDIS data. The study considered trends in the types and levels of EOS data products being ordered, the expanding number of users requesting products, and the "domains" of those users. The study showed that increasing numbers of users are using the validated, geophysical products produced from the radiance measurements recorded by the EOS instruments; while there remains a steady demand for the radiance products themselves. In 2003, over 2.1 million individuals contacted EOSDIS (as identified by unique email and/or URL) with just over 10% requesting a product or service. The users came from all sectors including 40% from more than 125 countries outside the U.S. University researchers and students (.edu) received over 40% of the some 29 million data and information products disseminated by EOSDIS. The trend in method of delivery for EOSDIS data has been away from receiving data on hard media (tapes, CD-ROM, etc.) to receiving the data over the network. Over 75% of the EOSDIS data products were disseminated via electronic means in 2003 contrasted with just under 30% in 2000. To plan for system-wide evolution you need to know whether the system is meeting the users' needs and expectations. Thus, in 2004 NASA commissioned a comprehensive survey to determine user satisfaction using the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) approach. The results show that, overall, the users are highly satisfied with the EOSDIS systems and services as the EOSDIS ACSI score outperformed both the averages for U.S. companies and for Federal Agencies. Noteworthy was the fact that there was no statistical difference in the quality scores received by the various EOSDIS data centers. The response indicated that customer support provided by the EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) is "world class" and that a very high number of users intend to use EOSDIS in the future (90%) and to recommend it to their colleagues (86%). The survey highlighted areas that, if improved, could lead to increased user satisfaction, including overall product quality, product documentation, and product selection and ordering processes. These results will be factored into NASA's evolution planning.
SF21A-0002 0800h
Title: An Overview of NOAA's Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) whose goal is to make major climate and environmental databases available via the Internet thus increasing the access and utilization of this national resource
Instead of being kept in a dusty warehouse, NOAA records are becoming more available to researchers and the public for use in various studies and projects. Modernization efforts involve keying of observations; imaging of original records on paper, microform, or photographs; vectorizing of shoreline charts; converting analog records to a digital format and web hosting data on the WSSRD\copyright\ (Web, Search, Store, Retrieve, Display) system. The number of images on-line via the WSSRD\copyright\ system has grown from just one-half million in 2000 to currently over forty-three million. CDMP has over 40 separate NOAA tasks underway, in an effort to provide increased access to its vast archive of climate and environmental data. The scope and variety of these data recovery projects range from producing digital files of Franklin and Thomas Jefferson's weather and climate diaries, keying early 20th century ionospheric data, building climatologies of the near-earth space environment using satellite data, to digitizing Mechanical Bathythermograph Data measurements of water temperatures at various ocean depths. Many of the records being converted from an analog to digital format are the original records housed in various NOAA Offices and storage facilities. These and many other NOAA records are available only in their original manuscript form and have deteriorated over time. The CDMP program allows these records to be saved for current and future scientists and historians by imaging and keying the data. The images are indexed so they can be more easily located via the Internet. The CDMP program is an example of a successful government project working hand- in-hand with the private sector to recover valuable climate and environmental data. For more information, see the latest annual report at: ncdc.noaa.gov/ oa/climate/cdmp/files/annualreport2003.pdf
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/cdmp/cdmp.html
SF21A-0003 0800h
NPOESS Environmental Data Products for Civil and Military Applications, and Climate Monitoring
The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) will produce 54 environmental data products serving military and civil operational users and the science community, supporting the atmospheric, cloud, land, ocean/water, earth radiation budget, and space remote sensing disciplines. Data products that are key to operations include imagery, atmospheric temperature and moisture profiling, sea surface temperature and wind speed/direction, and soil moisture. NPOESS exploits advanced sensor and data product development on the Earth Observing System (EOS) and other envirosats, including a predecessor mission, the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP). The NPOESS data products will be used in weather forecasting, operational decision making, and climate monitoring. The products are delivered with low latency following data acquisition on-orbit by using downlink to a globally distributed network. Synergistic interconnected processing of data products is used to improve quality and reliability. Because the NPOESS system will serve for many years, planning has included consideration of product improvements and long term measurement stability for support to climate monitoring.
SF21A-0004 0800h
World Ocean Database online: Access and use of quality controlled oceanographic profile data for oceanographic and climate change studies
The World Ocean Database 2001 (WOD01) was released in 2001 on CD and online as part of the IOC "Global Ocean Data Archeology and Rescue" (GODAR) and "World Ocean Database projects". The goal of these projects is to make available the largest possible database of quality controlled historical and modern oceanographic profile data to be used in scientific studies. The database contains nearly 7 million temperature profiles, more than 2 million salinity profiles, as well as observations of oxygen content, nutrient levels, and plankton counts. To help users of the data who want to work with only a subset of the data, the online WODselect system was developed to select, view, and download user specified subsets of the WOD01. All data undergo rigorous quality control procedures. The results of the quality control do not result in elimination of data from the database. Rather, flags are attached to each measurement leaving the decision to the user on whether to follow the underlying quality control decisions. The most important quality control is the use of the data in-house for scientific research. This research reveals quality control problems which have eluded all previous steps in the quality control procedure. The online version of the WOD01 is updated monthly based on ongoing quality control through scientific research.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/SELECT/dbsearch/dbsearch.html
SF21A-0005 0800h
Exploring Distributed Ocean Profile Datasets with Java OceanAtlas and Dapper
Dapper - a data server based upon the community-standard OpenDAP technology - eases selection and ingest of individual profiles from large collections of in-situ oceanographic profile data (e.g., bottle, CTD, XBT, etc.). Java OceanAtlas (JOA), a sophisticated tool for browsing and visualizing oceanographic profile data, can be used as a Dapper client. Dapper makes possible seamless access to both distributed and local profile datasets in JOA. The JOA Dapper client enables scientists to choose a profile data server, pre-select from hundreds of thousands of profiles by selecting a spatial/temporal domain of interest, and ingest selected profiles directly into Java OceanAtlas for analysis. JOA profiles can be exported to other file formats. Dapper and JOA are both based upon Java which means they will run on a wide variety of desktop operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, and UNIX). Currently a test server (Climate Data Portal), maintained at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, contains ca. 1.9 million bottle profiles and 291 thousand CTD profiles from the World Ocean Database 2001. An additional 45,000 profiles from the EPIC archives are available. Other Dapper servers proposed will include the NODC Argo and GTSPP datasets.
SF21A-0006 0800h
The Earth Exploration Toolbook: Making Diverse Earth Science Datasets Available and Usable by Space and Earth Science Researchers and Decision Makers
As research programs have become more interdisciplinary in nature it has become necessary for scientists to include data in their analysis that would traditionally fall outside their discipline of expertise. In the same way decision makers, who must deal with questions of an interdisciplinary nature, need to work with data from a wide range of disciplines, many of which are beyond their expertise. The question is how can these datasets and the software needed to access and analyze them become more easily available and usable by interdisciplinary research scientists and decision makers. The Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET, serc.carleton.edu/eet) was developed for the educational community; however, it has much broader applications. The EET chapters provide step-by-step instructions for using specific Earth science datasets and software tools, walking users through interesting examples that explore issues or concepts in Earth system science. These chapters can provide research scientists and decision makers with enough experience using particular datasets and data analysis tools outside of their area of expertise that they can then use the datasets and/or tools to address questions suggested by their research or societal needs. The EET team also facilitates the effective use of EET chapters through our 2-hour telecon-online workshops. During each workshop participants are walked through a specific chapter by and EET team member. After the workshop participants are in a better position to use the data and tool effectively. In this presentation we will demonstrate how the EET chapters can be useful to researchers and decision makers, and solicit input as to how to make this tool even more useful to these communities.
http://www.serc.carleton.edu/eet
SF21A-0007 0800h
Advances in Standards Adoption for NASA's Earth Science Data Systems
Starting in January 2004, NASA instituted a set of internal working groups to develop ongoing recommendations for the continuing broad evolution of Earth Science Data Systems development and management within NASA. One of these Data Systems Working Groups is called the Standards Process Group. This group's goal is to facilitate broader use of standards that have proven implementation and operational benefit to NASA Earth science. The concept is different from past standards strategies in several ways. Most importantly, it allocates the choice of standards to the to the larger community of practice rather than to dedicated standards-making projects. Only after practices have been shown to have useful implementation and beneficial operation will they be adopted as standards. This presentation will describe NASA's Earth science data systems standards process including the status of several pending standards submissions
SF21A-0008 0800h
Beyond Infrastructure: EOS-WEBSTER and WebCOAST add Polish, Packaging and Pizzazz to Data Distribution
A goal of the University of New Hampshire's web-based data distribution systems, EOS-WEBSTER (A WEB-based System for Terrestrial Ecosystem Research) and WebCOAST, is to reach the widest audience for our special collections of data and imagery products for the Earth Science and Coastal Ocean communities. To do this, we offer customizable products presented in visually attractive packages. From providing a colorful icon for each collection, to presenting information about the data in easily readable "magazine-style" Data Guides, and offering sophisticated GIS-based subsetting and data repackaging services, our sites make timely and important scientific data sets that are in use by researchers and policy makers accessible to the general population. We also cater to educators by providing special collections and features that (1) support the Forest Watch program, an educational project that includes K-12 teachers and students in UNH research activities that assess the state-of-health of local forest stands (2) provide step-by-step instructions that facilitate inquiry into Earth system science datasets via the Web-based Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET) and (3) will soon offer tools and curricula for "Measuring Vegetation Health", a project with the Museum of Science in Boston. Our systems are built on a solid infrastructure that includes the spatially-enabled Informix relational database, standards-based metadata and an extensible middle-ware layer that allows us to interoperate with extant data sources and to create a suite of interfaces that meet our users' diverse needs. Our efforts combine excellence in scientific research, data management technologies, and community exchange that reach beyond high-end infrastructure to serve the public interest. Please visit us at http://eos-webster.sr.unh.edu and http://webcoast.sr.unh.edu
http://eos-webster.sr.unh.edu
SF21A-0009 0800h
A Prototype for Earth Science Data on Demand
The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is the nation's archive for satellite, radar, model, and in-situ observational data. Today, the archive is almost one petabyte of data including the Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES), Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), and the Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) data. Furthermore, with the addition of new observational satellite data from NASA's Earth Observing System, data volumes at NCDC are projected to reach 50 petabytes by 2010. Since NCDC will experience data access issues never before seen, this proposal provides a workable distributed data access and client side, format neutral "data-on-demand" prototype; leveraging leading edge technologies assembled in a unique operational prototype system. We propose to develop multiple mechanisms for distributed data access, analysis, visualization, product generation and subsetting. We will implement a pilot system, developed by integrating data description, data transport, and data mining methodologies currently available which require minimal resources to implement. We will use data server software from the Open Source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP), along with an extension of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) called the Earth Science Markup Language (ESML) to implement a prototype of distributed access to model, satellite, radar and observational data by distributed users and applications. Portions of this pilot system will be modeled after NOAA Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS). This project leverages existing collaborations already established at NCDC including NOMADS, and the new Environmental Research Consortium (ERC), as well as previous National Science Foundation (NSF) proposals to demonstrate advanced host-side data manipulation capabilities.
SF21A-0010 0800h
Archiving Space Geodesy Data for 20+ Years at the CDDIS
Since 1982, the Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS) has supported the archive and distribution of geodetic data products acquired by NASA programs. These data include GPS (Global Positioning System), GLONASS (GLObal NAvigation Satellite System), SLR (Satellite Laser Ranging), VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry), and DORIS (Doppler Orbitography and Radiolocation Integrated by Satellite). The data archive supports NASA's space geodesy activities through the Solid Earth and Natural Hazards (SENH) program. The CDDIS data system and its archive have become increasingly important to many national and international programs, particularly several of the operational services within the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), including the International GPS Service (IGS), the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS), the International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry (IVS), the International DORIS Service (IDS), and the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS). The CDDIS provides easy and ready access to a variety of data sets, products, and information about these data. The specialized nature of the CDDIS lends itself well to enhancement and thus can accommodate diverse data sets and user requirements. All data sets and metadata extracted from these data sets are accessible to scientists through ftp and the web; general information about each data set is accessible via the web. The CDDIS, including background information about the system and its user communities, the computer architecture, archive contents, available metadata, and future plans will be discussed.
SF21A-0011 0800h
GIS-Based Earthquake Monitoring On The Internet
Advances in web-based technology make it possible to serve spatial data over the Internet. Web-based GIS becomes a powerful solution for distributing GIS data and functions on the Internet. Geographic information is being distributed in a variety of forms and shared by public users on the Internet. This provides users ability to easily search and view spatial data. This paper describes the development and implementation of a GIS-based interactive earthquake information on the Web. It presents an access to earthquake data and interactive database applications with querying capabilities over the Internet. It provides visualization and analysis of earthquake data as well. Application architecture is based on the classic client/server model. MapObjects Internet Map Server (MOIMS) software is used in the study. On the client side of the application, no special web browser is required.
SF21A-0012 0800h
WISRD: Web Interface for Searching, Subsetting, Stitching, Regridding, Resampling, and Reformating Data
The Web Interface for Searching, Subsetting, Stitching, Regridding, Resampling, and Reformating Data (WISRD) was designed to allow users to search for swath, scene, and gridded data sets by collection, parameter, date, and region of interest. Requested data granules are optionally stitched together and then gridded or regridded to a common user-definable grid covering the user's region of interest prior to delivery. Additionally output data can be stitched together to create daily grids, and multiple output formats are supported.
http://nsidc.org/data/wisrd
SF21A-0013 0800h
Climate data service provided by the Asia-Pacific Data-Research Center (APDRC)
The APDRC is building towards a vision of one-stop shopping of climate data and products for our users. Our data server infrastructure is built on OPeNDAP that makes local data accessible to remote locations regardless of the local storage format. Most of our locally-stored datasets are served by a GrADS DODS server (GDS) developed at COLA. NASA's satellite data in HDF format, ECMWF's reanalysis data in GRIB format and the Earth Simulator's model output in simple binary are all transformed into OPeNDAP through GDS. We also utilize Unidata's THREDDS (Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services) to customize remote datasets via aggregation to allow for more user-friendly access. The JPL ECCO assimilation-based ocean product is one example of a dataset that we serve in this way. In addition to direct access to the datasets served by our OPeNDAP servers, LAS and EPIC servers, both developed by PMEL, allow users to use search, select, make plots and download datasets all though a web-browser based interface. The LAS enables easy regional subsetting of global gridded products. An EPIC server provides Argo float data, GODAE/FNMOC daily real-time profile data, WOCE WHPO (CTD and bottle) data, WOCE upper ocean thermal (UOT) and current meter data. At present the APDRC serves approximately 50 data sets of relevance to climate research, including atmospheric, air-sea flux and ocean data collected both in situ and remotely (e.g., via satellite). In the future we will expand our holdings and links to include data and products that would be of interest to applications users and the general public, for example, nowcasts and forecasts of coastal ocean conditions, weather , climatic variability, etc.
http://apdrc.soest.hawaii.edu
SF21A-0014 0800h
An Innovative Approach to Data Access for a Diverse Group of Atmospheric Scientists
NASA Langley Atmospheric Sciences Data Center (ASDC) and Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) teams collaborated to provide special data products and images in a new and innovative approach for the United Arab Emirates Unified Aerosol Experiment (UAE$^{2}$) field campaign. UAE$^{2}$ focused on the coastal and desert areas of the United Arab Emirates region to gain insight on the properties and concentrations of aerosols and to understand how these aerosols might affect climate change. Over 20 international research organizations participated in the field campaign which occurred August through October 2004. Aerosol and meteorological measurements were provided by a network of instruments on land, buoys and ships, by airborne in situ and remote instruments, and by satellite retrievals. MISR's role in UAE$^{2}$ was to provide satellite retrievals of aerosols, cloud and surface properties and imagery as quickly as possible after data acquisition. The diverse group of participants created unique opportunities for ASDC and MISR to develop special data products and images in multiple formats that were easily accessible by all participants. Planning and testing of processes proved invaluable for smoothing the logistics of the ASDC-MISR team who reside on opposite coasts of the United States, ASDC in Hampton, VA, and MISR at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA. Examples of the data products, images and access methods as well as the data flow will be presented. Additional information about ASDC and MISR is available from the following web sites, http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov and http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/.
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov
SF21A-0015 0800h
A Digital Atlas of Atmospheric Chemistry Fields from Aircraft Campaigns
NASA Langley Research Center is establishing a temporally- and spatially-ordered digital atlas of atmospheric chemistry fields, using data from the GTE (Global Tropospheric Experiment) airborne missions and other field campaigns. Design of the atlas is based on fields, not point measurements, because of the differences in satellite vs. aircraft instrument fields of view and statistics. Information in the atlas will be searchable by geographical grid and time-of-year, and where appropriate, by altitude. Because some of the input data will show the effects of ephemeral events such as volcanic eruptions, pollution plumes, and forest fires, those data will be tagged. This atlas will have widespread application for modeling, satellite validation, and the planning of future aircraft campaigns in atmospheric chemistry.
http://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/
SF21A-0016 0800h
The U.S. Geological Survey's Global Visualization Viewer
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) AmericaView program was created to advance the availability, timely distribution, and widespread use of land remote sensing data, especially in the university community. One of the obstacles that researchers encountered in the past was the difficulty of identifying and acquiring the most appropriate data for their particular application and study area. The AmericaView program funded the development of the Global Visualization (GloVis) Viewer to overcome this barrier. GloVis provides a browse image-based search capability for mining the data inventories held at the USGS Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center. The holdings include land remote sensing data from the Landsat, Earth Observing-1 (EO-1), Terra, and Aqua satellites. GloVis is updated daily with browse images and metadata. A global locator map is used to navigate through a mosaic of browse images that are available for the selected sensor and acquisition period. Users can readily view current or historical browse images at global or regional scales, or zoom in and view single images. The ability to visually browse image content and extent enables interested users to geographically and temporally scroll through the image archives. GloVis fulfilled the goal of providing a visual data selection tool that allows a user to quickly and accurately be able to locate and order the optimum data for their research needs. In addition, the software code for the system is freely available, and other organizations have adapted it to create similar visual web-based tools to access their own remote sensing data archives.
http://glovis.usgs.gov
SF21A-0017 0800h
ECHO - An Infrastructure for Distributed Applications
The Earth Observing System (EOS) Clearinghouse (ECHO) has been operational for two years and enables a "marketplace" of science data and service providers, and consumers. To accomplish this goal, ECHO provides two registries. The first is a registry of metadata that is updated on a regular basis by the data providers. These metadata describe science content and data acquisition details about the data holdings. The second is a registry of services. Together these registries support discovery, access and delivery capabilities. ECHO makes these available to clients so that clients appear to have all the metadata in their system without the burden of managing it all. ECHO also offers its clients a single interface for placing orders, and then brokers them on behalf of the users. ECHO provides some user account management capabilities. In the future, ECHO will broker service and data transactions. This all serves to simplify client development and streamline data and service access by end users. It also alleviates the burden on the scientist of having to find and apply data services to the data. Scientists can focus their time on their jobs of analysis and research. ECHO also provides tools to help in use of the APIs. This presentation discusses the capability and resources available to help providers of data and services, client developers and applications developers in using ECHO as their data and service access infrastructure.
http://eos.nasa.gov/echo
SF21A-0018 0800h
Metadata Database at Lehigh Earth Observatory
Lehigh Earth Observatory (LEO) is a multidisciplinary program to focus study on the earth and environmental systems and society. We distribute results and data of Observatory activities via the web. In order to better organize and serve our data, we are currently working on the implementation of a new database to empower a dynamic website. One of the challenges in building this database comes from data diversity. We have continuous data collected from automated instruments, direct observational data, simple string data to document, image, media files and GIS coverage files. Extensive effort has been put into designing a scalable and flexible database with a self-supporting structure. Data generators perform data input on the web. A user-friendly interface guides through the input procedures and provides quality control and assessment checks. Public users also access data by web browser thus eliminating the need for special software to navigate and retrieve data. A simple search module is completed and an advanced search module utilizing extensive metadata is under development.
SF21A-0019 0800h
Lessons Learned in Generating Crosswalks for Earth Science Metadata
In order to facilitate interoperability among Earth Science data systems, NASA recently completed a project in which the metadata of three systems were mapped to each other and to standards published by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC-STD-001-1998 and FGDC-STD-012-2002). While studying the metadata and developing the crosswalks, several themes emerged that apply to any type of metadata and that need to be addressed to ensure that future systems and standards maximize interoperability: - definitions need to be complete, unambiguous, and further clarified using examples. - mapping one set of metadata to another can be highly subjective. - documentation needs to be written for an audience much less familiar with the metadata than those that developed it. - automated translation of one type of metadata to another requires diligent human input. The mappings resulting from this project and additional information are available to all on the HDF-EOS Tools and Information web site. For each set of metadata, the following are provided: each entity (or class) and its definition and associated attributes; each attribute, its definition and class path, and a mapping of each attribute to attributes in the other data systems and standards.
http://hdfeos.gsfc.nasa.gov/hdfeos/datamapping/index.cfm
SF21A-0020 0800h
GCMD Portals for Focused Access to Earth and Climate Data
Are you finding the data you need? Are you overwhelmed by too much data and not enough direction as to what is the right data for you? Is Google still not getting you to the data? With recent movies portraying climate change disasters, scientists need to be able to easily find available Earth, solar and climate data. Locating the vast amount of Earth science data and tools available today, can be difficult for users. NASA's Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) has a diverse collection of metadata describing data and tools from the Earth's core to solar interactions and their influences on climate and life. With over 15,000 metadata records in the GCMD database users may still feel the task of finding the right data daunting. The GCMD has a solution: customized access to subsets of the database content through "portals". Portals are a virtual subsets of the metadata found in the GCMD, which allow users to view smaller, related groups of metadata. Some portals are representative of a specific scientific community or project, such as the Antarctic Master Directory (AMD), which represents an international collaboration conducting scientific research in Antarctica. Users looking specifically for models or model output data may find the Model portal useful. Other portals such as the Sun-Earth Interaction portal, are based on an Earth science theme related to Sun's activity affects the Earth's environment. Portals have made it easier for organizations to maintain and document their data in one place without duplicating the effort to create another online directory.
http://gcmd.nasa.gov
SF21A-0021 0800h
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Data from the Alaska Satellite Facility
The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) downlinks, archives, processes and distributes Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data to NASA approved researchers and U.S. government agencies. When a researcher becomes an approved NASA investigator through a simple proposal process, any data in the ASF catalog can be ordered as a level 0 or level 1 product at no cost. The EOS Data Gateway (EDG) provides everyone with the ability to examine the ASF catalog for data. The EDG enables searches by satellite, time, and geographic region. The extensive archive contains SAR data acquired by the ERS-1, ERS-2, JERS, and Radarsat-1 SAR sensors. Arctic researchers can find SAR data for Alaska, Arctic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, Bering, Beaufort and Chukchi Seas from September 1991 to the present. Researchers looking for SAR data of Antarctica and surrounding seas, the ASF archive contains data from December 1994 to the present. Data from elsewhere in the world may be found in the archive as well. Mosaics of the Amazon Basin and Boreal North America are available on CD and DVD; the source data for the mosaics is available from the archive. The ASF User Services Office is available to assist with the proposal process, data searches, and to answer any questions about using SAR data.
SF21A-0022 0800h
Tools for EOS Data and Metadata
We have developed a series of data and metadata tools over the past several years to enhance the usability of NASA EOS data for Earth science research and applications. Those tools include 1) data format and metadata format conversion or translation tools, 2) XML representations of NASA HDF-EOS data and ECS data model, and related utility tools, 3) data and metadata viewing, validation, and update tools, and 4) a web-service-based HDF-EOS server for data discovery and access. We have also recently conducted a pathfinder project of HDF-EOS4 to HDF-EOS5 transition for a MODIS and an AIRS product to find a path (or obstacles) to transition EOS data products from HDF-EOS4 to HDF-EOS5, as new and future Earth observation satellite data products (such as Aura and NPOESS) are in HDF-EOS5 or HDF5 format. This poster presents various usability tools we have developed for NASA EOS data and metadata. Use cases of these tools for support of the research and application community and EOS missions are illustrated.
SF21A-0023 0800h
Tools for Accessing and Manipulating MODIS Snow & Sea Ice Products at the National Snow and Ice Data Center
Snow and sea ice cover are some of the more important spatial features of the Earth's surface that can be readily measured from space. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments onboard NASA's Terra and Aqua spacecraft collect spectral data that are used to routinely produce snow cover and sea ice products. With higher spatial and spectral resolution, the MODIS snow and ice products (including snow albedo and sea ice surface temperature) improve upon a long history of global coverage satellite-derived products that have been produced from polar-orbiting satellites since the early 1970s. Fully automated, quality controlled, daily global maps of snow cover and sea ice extent, produced at 500m, 1000m, and $0.05\deg$ spatial resolutions by the MODIS Land Team, are available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). The product suite will be further enhanced beginning mid-2005 with the inclusion of fractional snow cover in the daily product, addition of a daily snow product in a polar projection, and production of monthly climate modeling grid products for both snow and sea ice. Several tools are now available to streamline data acquisition and processing for users. Automated access to current data can be obtained through ingest subscriptions, data pool cache scripting, and a machine-to-machine gateway. Users can select data with targeted interfaces and the EOS Data Gateway, both with online reduced-resolution images to allow users to identify usable data prior to ordering. Integrated data manipulation tools provide subsetting, gridding, and resampling of images prior to downloading, minimizing the burden of data management by users. Collectively, the suite enables users to efficiently manage the large quantity of MODIS data available for regional and global studies.
http://nsidc.org/modis