Increasing Accessibility of Scientific Ocean Drilling Data in the NOAA NCEI Deep Archive

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

This award will develop an application programming interface to allow the deep data archive of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), and JOIDES Resolution- sourced data of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and International Ocean Discovery Program (both IODP) to be machine discoverable over the world wide web and thus more easily obtained for scientific users. This data is stored at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?s (NOAA?s) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI; formerly the National Geophysical Data Center) through agreement with the National Science Foundation. The requirement for storage of flatfield DSDP, ODP, and IODP data as a deep archive at this site is given within the language of the current Cooperative Agreement Award OCE-1326927 to Texas A&M University regarding operation of the JOIDES Resolution drillship for the International Ocean Discovery Program. Currently, this deep archive data is only available via NOAA personnel retrieving data by hand from tape storage, thus preventing machine discovery or easy data recovery by science community members, and placing the data itself at risk through the requirement for higher level of data maintenance at a time of reduced resources at NOAA. This proposal would thus ?shore up? the DSDP, ODP, and IODP deep archive, and make the data also available for innovative community efforts to make discoverable data sets that merge Expedition and post-Expedition data sets. This work is relatively straightforward but essential for making the deep archive of the DSDP, ODP and IODP available through the World-Wide Web for modern data discovery methods. The proposal applies tools developed at the NOAA NCEI to transfer the data off of tape files unconnected to the web to the NCEI Extract system (NEXT), adding metadata about the data to the NEXT catalog. The work will be done by University of Colorado staff that serve as NCEI software developers and managers, working with NCEI Federal staff. This work will thus modernize the DSDP, ODP, and IODP deep archive, helping to ensure both its continued existence and improve its relevance and value to many thousands of geoscientists worldwide.