A Portal for Earth Science Data Exploration

As the earth and envi­ron­men­tal sci­ences evolve to be more data-intensive, dis­cov­er­ing, inte­grat­ing and ana­lyz­ing mas­sive amounts of het­ero­ge­neous infor­ma­tion becomes crit­i­cal to enable researchers to address com­plex ques­tions about our envi­ron­ment and our role within it. DataONE, the Data Obser­va­tion Net­work for Earth, today released tech­nol­ogy capa­ble of pro­vid­ing researchers access to glob­ally dis­trib­uted, net­worked data from a sin­gle point of discovery.

The increas­ing vol­ume of envi­ron­men­tal and Earth sci­ence data, from his­toric obser­va­tional field notes to recent remotely sensed data, is chal­leng­ing sci­en­tists to locate and inte­grate per­ti­nent data in a man­ner that addresses impor­tant ques­tions for sci­ence and soci­ety. For exam­ple: How is the spread of inva­sive species affected by pat­terns of land use? What fac­tors pre­dict the dis­tri­b­u­tion of emer­gent infec­tious dis­eases, and what are the asso­ci­ated health risks? Are cli­mate mod­els suf­fi­ciently pre­dic­tive? DataONE addresses this need by pro­vid­ing a sin­gle search inter­face that queries data repos­i­to­ries dis­trib­uted glob­ally. These data cen­ters indi­vid­u­ally store and man­age dig­i­tal sci­en­tific data hold­ings and DataONE now enables sci­en­tists around the world to eas­ily dis­cover data wher­ever the data reside, and to pre­serve their data for the long-term. Research enabled by this wide­spread access to data will range from stud­ies that illu­mi­nate fun­da­men­tal envi­ron­men­tal processes to iden­ti­fy­ing envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems and poten­tial solutions.

“Sci­ence is enter­ing a new era of data inten­sive research” says William Mich­ener, DataONE prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico. “DataONE has been built to sup­port sci­en­tists in dis­cov­er­ing and pre­serv­ing data and, most impor­tantly, in enabling new sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies. DataONE is crit­i­cally needed now to broaden the nature of and increase the pace of sci­ence as researchers tackle the grand chal­lenges fac­ing sci­ence and society.”

Data held by South Africa National Parks, the Knowl­edge Net­work for Bio­com­plex­ity, the Eco­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Amer­ica, Dryad, Oak Ridge National Lab­o­ra­to­ries Dis­trib­uted Active Archive Cen­ter, the United States Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, the Long Term Eco­log­i­cal Research Net­work, the Part­ner­ship for Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Stud­ies of Coastal Oceans and the Cal­i­for­nia Dig­i­tal Library are cur­rently search­able within DataONE. In the com­ing months more orga­ni­za­tions are join­ing as mem­bers to make their data accessible.

The Earth Data Analy­sis Cen­ter (EDAC) at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico is one such mem­ber orga­ni­za­tion and “an enthu­si­as­tic con­tribut­ing mem­ber of the grow­ing DataONE net­work” says Karl Bene­dict, cen­ter direc­tor. “For nearly 50 years EDAC has focused deliv­er­ing Earth sci­ence and other geospa­tial data and infor­ma­tion to diverse end user com­mu­ni­ties. Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the DataONE net­work pro­vides us with a great oppor­tu­nity to extend the impact of our data holdings.”

“Right now researchers have a hard time even find­ing the right data to answer com­plex envi­ron­men­tal ques­tions, and when they do, the work nec­es­sary to inte­grate really dif­fer­ent types of data can be over­whelm­ing,” says NCEAS Deputy Direc­tor Stephanie Hamp­ton, “DataONE pro­vides the type of plat­form we need, to pro­pel envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence into the dig­i­tal age.”

DataONE enables uni­ver­sal access to data and also facil­i­tates researchers in ful­fill­ing their need for data man­age­ment and in pro­vid­ing secure and per­ma­nent access to their data. These needs are filled by offer­ing the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity a suite of tools and train­ing mate­ri­als that cover all aspects of the data life cycle from data col­lec­tion, to man­age­ment, to analy­sis and publication.

DataONE is a community-driven orga­ni­za­tion and the DataONE Users Group pro­vides the oppor­tu­nity for fun­ders, users, devel­op­ers, edu­ca­tors or any other stake­hold­ers to gather and con­tribute to DataONE prod­ucts and ser­vices. DataONE includes experts from library, com­puter, and envi­ron­men­tal sci­ences explic­itly to bridge these worlds and to pro­vide an infra­struc­ture to serve sci­ence for many decades to come.

Media Con­tacts: Rebecca Koskela, (505) 382‑0890; email: rkoskela@unm.edu or UNM, Karen Went­worth, (505) 277‑5627; email: kwent2@unm.edu