Online Ecological and Environmental Data

Citation

Cole, F. (2005), "Online Ecological and Environmental Data", The Electronic Library, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 616-617. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470510631344

This thematic issue consists of six reports of agencies involved in the management of environmental data, predominantly in the USA. The reports are mainly descriptive, but in some there is an attempt to provide more than just a brief analytical and historical perspective on the projects under view. All describe their efforts in providing web‐based access.

Environmental data are challenging to manage, and to interpret, because of the complications introduced by having to deal with the dimensions of time and location. Not only do the data change over time (as the environment changes) but the collection, storage and retrieval systems and priorities do as well. This set of articles reports some of the typical management solutions currently being put into practice.

The first article describes the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University, and its provision of global environmental change data. The development and management of the Center is described, and some of the problems presented by the variety of data sources are touched on.

By way of contrast the next article goes into considerable detail about a particular product, the NASA Global Change Master Directory. The respective merits of controlled vocabulary and free‐text terminology are canvassed, and some reference is made to the metadata structure of the Directory. The point is well made (p. 25) that “metadata” means different things to different information professionals, and that while the focus until recently may have been on “technical” syntactic issues, in the geospatial (GIS) community for instance, there is an increasing recognition of the need to pay attention to semantic metadata, to assist in information discovery and re‐use.

The third article adopts more of an historical approach in describing the evolution of a network of organisations in the USA with interests in the study of acid rain. A number of examples are described, such as the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, the National Atmospheric Deposition Program & National Trends Network, Man and the Biosphere, and the Long Term Ecological Research Network.

The fourth article describes web‐related developments within the National Biological Information Infrastructure. Of interest to readers will be a custom‐built search engine, BioBot, which for its index draws on the NBII collection, other biological data collections, and relevant content of the major search engines. A customisable web portal for the NBII services is also described, although perhaps best seen by going directly to the site itself (see http://my.nbii.gov).

The last two articles describe the Syracuse Research Corporation's sets of environmental chemical data, and the SteamNet Database of Fish & Fisheries in the Columbia River Basin, Oregon.

The recurring comment in these articles about the variety and incompatibility of data available might have led us to expect a more extended discussion of the problems of interoperability than is provided. Descriptions of “how we do it here” can be interesting, but by their very nature are ephemeral unless some general principles are drawn out and explored. Maybe these issues can be addressed more extensively and systematically the next time this topic is visited in this series.