Stewardship Best Practices for Improved Discovery and Reuse of
Heterogeneous and Cross-Disciplinary Earth System Data
Abstract
Some of the Earth system data products such as those from NASA airborne
and field investigations (a.k.a. campaigns), are highly heterogeneous
and cross-disciplinary, making the data extremely challenging to manage.
For example, airborne and field campaign measurements tend to be
sporadic over a period of time, with large gaps. Data products generated
are of various processing levels and utilized for a wide range of inter-
and cross-disciplinary research and applications. Data and derived
products have been historically stored in a variety of domain-specific
standard (and some non-standard) formats and in various locations such
as NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), NASA airborne
science facilities, field archives, or even individual scientists’
computer hard drives. As a result, airborne and field campaign data
products have often been managed and represented differently, making it
onerous for data users to find, access, and utilize campaign data. Some
difficulties in discovering and accessing the campaign data originate
from the incomplete data product and contextual metadata that may
contain details relevant to the campaign (e.g. campaign acronym and
instrument deployment locations), but tend to lack other significant
information needed to understand conditions surrounding the data. Such
details can be burdensome to locate after the conclusion of a campaign.
Utilizing consistent terminology, essential for improved discovery and
reuse, is also challenging due to the variety of involved disciplines.
To help address the aforementioned challenges faced by many repositories
and data managers handling airborne and field data, this presentation
will describe stewardship practices developed by the Airborne Data
Management Group (ADMG) within the Interagency Implementation and
Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT) under the NASA’s Earth Science Data
systems (ESDS) Program.