U.S. Global Change Data and Information System Organization: Global Change Data Management Working Group System: GCDIS Home Page

Linda Hill
lhill@usra.edu

The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established to
observe, understand, and predict global change and to make its research
results available for use in policy matters.  The 1992 Global Change Data
and Information Management Program Plan states that the participating
federal agencies will work together, with academia and the international
community, and that they agree to make it as easy as possible for
researchers and others to access and use global change data and information.

The Global Change Data and Information System Implementation Plan builds on
the Program Plan to define the construction of a Global Change Data and
Information System (GCDIS).  The Implementation Plan states that the
agencies will identify the vast array of data and information based on the
highest priority areas of interest for global change research, and will
design and implement data and information services adequate to support the
full breadth of the USGCRP.

The Global Change Data Management Working Group has undertaken the
development of the GCDIS home page (http://www.gcdis.usgcrp.gov) and the
GCDIS gopher (gopher://esdim2.esdim.noaa.edu), both of which identify and
provide access to the global change related resources of the federal
government agencies and beyond. There is also a GCDIS pilot project called
GC-ASK (Assisted Search for Knowledge) that is developing a resource
discovery tool for distributed data sources based on semantic network
technology and the Z39.50 protocol. The prototype system can be accessed at
http://www.esdim.noaa.gov:8080/.

All of this activity fits within the structure of the Committee on the
Environment and Natural Resource of the National Science & Technology
Council. Advice to GCDIS from the global change research community is
provided by the USGCRP and the Committee on Geophysical and Environmental
Data of the National Academy of Sciences.

Federal agencies participating in GCDIS include
     Department of Agriculture
     Department of Commerce
     Department of Defense
     Department of Energy
     Department of the Interior
     Environmental Protection Agency
     National Aeronautics and Space Administration
     National Science Foundation