1994 Arctic Ocean Section
Data Management
Claire S. Hanson and David L. McGinnis
Data from AOS-94 are valuable national and international scientific re-
sources and must be preserved for analysis by both current and future genera-
tions of scientists. To ensure preservation, data management coordination for
AOS-94 will be provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC),
University of Colorado at Boulder. NSIDC is funded by the National Science
Foundation's Office of Polar Programs as the Data Coordination Center for
the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program; the AOS-94 data will be inte-
grated into the ARCSS data management project.
A data archiving plan is being developed in collaboration with the AOS-94
project leaders to ensure that AOS-94 data sets and data products, along with
complete documentation, will be archived at NSIDC and accessible through
discipline-appropriate data centers. Examples of these centers with which
NSIDC has close working relationships include the NOAA National Geophys-
ical Data Center's Marine Geology and Geophysics Division and its Paleocli-
mate Group, the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center, the NOAA
National Climatic Data Center, and the Department of Energy's Carbon Diox-
ide Information and Analysis Center. Copies of the marine core data, bathy-
metric data, physical oceanography and primary productivity data, and atmo-
spheric chemistry and related data from AOS-94 will be sent to these centers
for incorporation into their databases. In cases such as biology and contamin-
ants where there is currently no national center having responsibility for a
particular discipline, NSIDC will maintain that AOS-94 data and provide ac-
cess services until a discipline center is developed or designated.
NSIDC's ARCSS Data Coordination Center emphasizes ease of access, com-
prehensive documentation, and a researcher-centered philosophy. Our goal is
to make the migration of valuable data as easy as possible. For adding data to
the archive we develop a plan with each investigator. When an investigator
and the NSIDC ARCSS staff agree that the data are ready, data sets are trans-
ferred to NSIDC and made available via electronic means such as anonymous
ftp and/or the World Wide Web. When logical groupings of data are identi-
fied, and the volume is sufficient to warrant it, a CD-ROM is considered as an
Claire Hanson and David McGinnis are with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado in Boul-
der, Colorado, U.S.A.
106
Previous Page
