HR: 0800h
AN: IN41A-0074    [Abstracts]
TI: Earth System Atlas: citable publication and visualization of datasets
AU: * Reid, S J
EM: stephen.j.reid@lehigh.edu
AF: Lehigh University, Environmental Initiative, Bethlehem, PA 18015, United States
AU: Proussevitch, A
EM: alex.proussevitch@unh.edu
AF: University of New Hampshire, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans & Space, Durham, NH 03824, United States
AU: Chupa, M
EM: mike.chupa@lehigh.edu
AF: Lehigh University, Environmental Initiative, Bethlehem, PA 18015, United States
AU: Prentice, C
EM: colin.prentice@bris.ac.uk
AF: University of Bristol, Department of Earth Sciences, Bristol, BS8 1RJ, United Kingdom
AU: Sahagian, D
AF: Lehigh University, Environmental Initiative, Bethlehem, PA 18015, United States
AB: The rapid growth of digital data archived around the world, stored on a large number of different web servers and in numerous formats, are often under-exploited because of the difficulties that arise from data persistence, ease of access and format incompatibilities. The metadata and physical infrastructure necessary to make these data widely accessible and useful to the scientific community and the wider general audience (policy makers, educators, and the lay public) is often incomplete, or missing altogether. Web access to data also has a tendency to disappear when funds are no longer available to support these scattered individual efforts. As a result, access to and knowledge of data sources and their reliability and limitations is frequently a major stumbling block for scientists, policy makers, NGOs, educators and others. Data from significantly different disciplines have been stored and manipulated in highly different ways, and while it is possible to overlay diverse data on a superficial level, finding ways to make them interact in a meaningful way is non-trivial. The purpose of the Earth System Atlas, now operational with a Steering Committee and Editorial Board, is to collect, peer-review and offer for graphical display and on-line manipulation a wide range of data sets representative of the entire Earth system, helping to promote new ideas in research while providing a venue for bona fide citable publication of datasets. A preliminary version of the Atlas is now visible at the link below.
UR: http://www.earthsystematlas.org
DE: 0530 Data presentation and visualization
DE: 0540 Image processing
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting