100 GRIIDC Datasets Archived at NCEI!

white wave effect

To promote data sharing in the Gulf of Mexico, GRIIDC not only stores and shares data but also submits cruise data to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), a long-term repository for oceanic, atmospheric, and geophysical data. Over the past few years, GRIIDC has been collaborating with NCEI to archive datasets collected during oceanographic research cruises. As of February 2020, GRIIDC is happy to announce that there are 100 GoMRI-funded datasets now publicly accessible via the NCEI Ocean Archive System! These data are discoverable via the NCEI Geoportal as well as other online discovery tools, such as Data.gov .

In November 2015, GRIIDC started submitting datasets to NCEI using NCEI’s online tool, Send2NCEI (S2N). It was determined that an alternative method be used in order to promote faster archiving to NCEI. GRIIDC and NCEI initiated a collaborative effort to develop a streamlined process for moving appropriate datasets to NCEI. GRIIDC provided a cruise dataset inventory, and NCEI provided detailed guidance documents on data and metadata requirements for NCEI.

In October 2017, GRIIDC began submission to NCEI as archived packages posted to an FTP server for NCEI to retrieve. Data packages consisted of one or multiple datasets collected during the same cruise along with data documentation, a data dictionary (when applicable), location files, readme files, and collection-level metadata. This included standardized information such as NASA’s Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) and National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) observation type, instrument type, data type (keywords) as controlled vocabularies. These terms are assigned to the accession metadata records to help ensure discoverability and to aid in drawing relationships among accessions. In addition, data packages also included NetCDF files for CTD, ADCP, trajectory and similar oceanographic datasets from GRIIDC’s Environmental Research Division Data Access Program (ERDDAP) server along with original files submitted by the researcher for easier access to scientific data in common file formats.

GRIIDC has submitted 26 datasets through S2N and 35 packages (74 GRIIDC datasets) posted on the GRIIDC FTP server for NCEI to retrieve. Currently, 100 datasets in total are archived at NCEI. These archived datasets can be found at NCEI by searching for either the NCEI accession number or the dataset’s digital object identifier (DOI). At NCEI’s Ocean Archive System, a listing of GRIIDC’s datasets that are included in the package is available under the documentation tab. Also, included is the link to GRIIDC’s landing page and any associated journal articles.

GRIIDC is happy to share this milestone as a major step forward in making data easily accessible and publicly available. However, this number includes only 45% of RFP-I datasets from the GoMRI program. While the GoMRI program officially ends later this year, GRIIDC will continue submitting all the appropriate GoMRI datasets to NCEI through 2021.

Thanks to our partners at NCEI for this successful collaboration!