GRIIDC 2019 Year in Review

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Happy New Year! As we begin a new decade, it’s time to take a look back at GRIIDC’s achievements in 2019. The team accomplished a lot through various meetings, conferences, software releases, and training opportunities. GRIIDC continues to grow and evolve by adding new members to the team and developing new partnerships to continue our mission of ensuring a scientific data and information legacy that promotes continual scientific discovery and public awareness of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.

By the end of 2019, GRIIDC housed 2,426 publicly available datasets which are collectively over 75 TB of data. GRIIDC expects that in 2020 the collection and use of our system will continue to grow.

Here are some highlights from GRIIDC’s busy 2019:

January: William Nichols, GIS and Metadata Specialist, participated in the 2019 Earth Science Information Partners Winter Meeting in Bethesda, Maryland from January 15-18.

GRIIDC hired Lalitha Asirvadam on January 28th as Technical Coordinator on the Data Package Review team. She works with researchers around the Gulf in order to facilitate data sharing and promote a culture of open data. Lalitha previously worked as the Program Coordinator for the GoMRI consortium Dispersion Research on Oil: Physics and Plankton Studies (DROPPS) at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, Texas. She was also the Data Manager and Outreach Coordinator for the group. As a marine conservationist with an interest in science communications, Lalitha brings her diverse skills to the team by not only working with researchers to ensure that their data is well organized, but she also seeks out outreach opportunities to promote GRIIDC and marine science education. Additionally, she writes articles for the GRIIDC website and manages GRIIDC social media accounts.

February: GRIIDC participated in the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference (GoMOSES) in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 5-8th. GRIIDC managed an informational booth to address data management questions and held seven training workshops during the session breaks. GRIIDC also held an Advisory Committee meeting at the conference. This meeting provided consortia data managers, the GoMRI management team, and research board data management committee members the opportunity to discuss data management issues and future plans and priorities for development and improvements to the GRIIDC system. During the meeting, GRIIDC reported on the status of archiving data to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), software improvements, GRIIDC program’s future, and future users.

March: GRIIDC’s software development team moved larger datasets over 25 GB to cold storage at Amazon Web Services (AWS). GRIIDC receives many large datasets and using AWS will free up storage space to allow for more data to be ingested.

April: GRIIDC volunteered for the Corpus Christi Earth Day Bay Day event downtown with the Harte Research Institute in order to promote marine science education and connect with the local community.

May: GRIIDC hosted one training webinar in May: Submitting Cruise Data to GRIIDC to help researchers understand how to submit oceanographic cruise data to GRIIDC.

June: Program Manager Rosalie Rossi and Technical Coordinator Lalitha Asirvadam presented data management tools and participated in the Data and Monitoring Team meetings at the Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA) All Hands Meeting, held June 10-13, 2019 in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

July: Bipana Sigdel, GRIIDC Research Specialist, and William Nichols attended the SciPy conference in Austin, Texas from July 8-10.

August: Rosalie Rossi attended the 2019 Mississippi Based RESTORE Act Center of Excellence (MBRACE) All Hands meeting in Jackson, Mississippi and gave an overview of GRIIDC’s data repository and basic tutorials on how to use the system.

September: Dr. Deborah LeBel, physical oceanographer, was hired as a Research Specialist and Subject Matter Expert to help curate datasets. She has an expertise in analyzing large-scale observations of circulation and deep-water formation as well as surface ocean processes. She previously worked at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, interpreting measurements of turbulent energy dissipation rates, wave breaking, and other processes that affect air/sea interaction. She currently serves as a Subject Matter Expert for GRIIDC, bringing knowledge and skills that have been invaluable to the data package review process.

October: GRIIDC staff attended a COMPASS communications workshop at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in order to better communicate science to a broad audience.

November: Rosalie Rossi and Lalitha Asirvadam attended the 25th Biennial Coastal Estuarine Federation (CERF) Conference in Mobile, Alabama. GRIIDC also held a workshop for HRI graduate students on basic Data Management practices, as well as how to submit data to GRIIDC.

December: Rosalie Rossi attended the fall American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, California from December 9-13. Rosalie teamed up with the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) to host an exhibit booth. She also presented a poster titled, “GRIIDC: A Tale of One Data Repository’s Journey to Become FAIR”. The AGU fall meeting is the largest international meeting of Earth and space sciences in the world.