Resources

How to Contribute Data

If you are interested in contributing data to the BCO data collection, or would like to discuss management of your data associated with an existing or proposed project, please contact us.

See our where to archive data document describing where to archive data for long term preservation.

A series of 'milepost' documents providing guidance to OCB scientists who are uncertain where to submit or propose to submit their data is being drafted.

  • NSF-OCE and NASA OB&B biogeochemical data submission milepost (view the PDF)

Data Management Best Practices Guide

BCO-DMO staff members are putting together a data management best practices guide. Decades of experience managing oceanographic data is being distilled into a manual of best practice recommendations for managing marine data. The current version of the manual is available for download in PDF format or as an HTML format file (coming soon).

We would appreciate receiving comments about this manual. If you care to take the time to provide feedback to us, please contact any of the BCO-DMO staff members.

MapServer: Geospatial Access to Data
 

There are several ways that web sites provide geospatial access to spacially enabled data.  We sought a solution that would be data driven (that is, display data directly from our metadata database and data servers and not have to rely on pre-made maps and images), and use open source software.  We decided on the MapServer software, initially developed by the University of Minnesota.  The MapServer
software has several advantages, including its dependence on standards, such as OGC's Web Mapping Service.  We were also lucky enough to have our contract programmer, Charlton Galverino, be very proficient in using this package, so he has been able to tailor the interface extensively to suit our user's needs.

MapServer, because of its OGC underpinnings, enabled us to
provide Web Feature Service (WFS) access to our data with little effort.

Our metadata database provides the basis for all of the maps generated on the fly and displayed on the user's browser. However, we also wanted people to be able to view the data on the browser as well.  We are interested in enabling the user to decide whether the datasets are of sufficient interest to warrant their download to their own platform for further analysis and study. However, we do not intend to provide the analysis software via our web site.  We do not want to decide how to contour the raw data into a regular grid, for example.  These decisions are up to the investigator to pursue once they have the data with which to work.

To facilitate the viewing of data, we provide several ways of
displaying data.  These include 

  1.  Basic X-Y plot (such as salinity versus depth)
  2.  Abundance plots (circle size log proportional to count or weight)
  3.  So called time-series plots
  4.  X-Y plots of data from multiple stations
  5. Ability to display the data when the data are themselves images or movies

Since we wanted to facilitate the downloading of the data (not just the metadata) we added the Web Feature Service OGC protocol to our list of download options, which already included downloads as ASCII (tab, comma and space separated), Matlab binary file, netCDF,  ODV and KML files.  KML files can be used by such applications as Google Earth and Google Maps.

Metadata Database

All of the information about the data we make accessible is kept in the metadata database. It includes such information as who collected the data, who contributed the data, what type of data were collected, what instruments were used, etc. You can view additional information about the metadata database by clicking here. Forms are available for contributing metadata to the BCO-DMO:

Marine Metadata Interoperability Project (MMI)

BCO-DMO staff members have participated in MMI workshops and the MMI Web site is a valuable resource for information pertaining to marine metadata (MMI » MMI Web site)

JGOFS/GLOBEC Data Management Software

The JGOFS/GLOBEC data management software was developed by Glenn Flierl, et al. (description) and is one of the main ways we serve data and make data available for downloading. The software is available from ftp://globec.whoi.edu/pub/software/JGOFS_GLOBEC and information about becoming a data server is available from http://globec.whoi.edu/globec-dir/jgofs-server.html.

Presentations, PowerPoints, Posters

Check this page for copies of presentations, power point files, and posters. They are listed by date, first author and title, with the most recent entry listed first.

Optional BCO Site Login

The entire BCO site is accessible without logging in. However, if you wish to modify BCO site information, we request that you identify yourself (become an authenticated user of this site) via user login.