Preservation of Data for Earth System Science- Towards a Content Standard

Various remote sensing agencies of the world have created a data rich environment for research and applications over the last three decades. Especially over the last decade, the volume and variety of data useful for Earth system science have increased quite rapidly. One of the key purposes of collecting these data and generating useful digital products containing derived geophysical parameters is to study the long-term trends in the Earth s behavior. Long-term observational data and derived products are essential for validating results from models that predict the future behavior of the Earth system. Given the significant resources expended in gathering the observational data and developing the derived products, it is important to preserve them for the benefit of future generations of users. Preservation involves maintaining the bits with no loss (or loss within scientifically acceptable bounds) as they move across systems as well as over time, ensuring readability over time, and providing for long-term understandability and repeatability of previously obtained results. In order to ensure long-term understandability and repeatability, it is necessary to identify all items of content that must be preserved and plan for such preservation. This paper discusses the need for a standard enumerating and describing such content items and reports on the progress made by NASA and the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP Federation) in the U.S. towards such a standard

State of the art in data citation

Presents examples from outside the field of linguistics to illustrate: 1) layers of data management; 2) data lifecycles; 3) levels of data; 4) a brief history of data citation; and 5) current data citation standards and initiatives. Presented at the second workshop on Developing Standards for Data Citation and Attribution for Reproducible Research in Linguistics, held at the University of Texas, April 8-10, 2016.National Science Foundation (NSF-SMA 1447886

Establishing Trustworthy Repositories of Scientific Data: Opportunities and Benefits

Scientific progress often depends on the ability of the scientific community to build on the works of others. Such works include scientific data, published reports of findings, and other research-related information and artifacts that are produced as part of the scientific process. Providing capabilities for accessing and using such scientific works enables the reproducibility of published methods and results to identify opportunities for improvement. Access and use of science products also enables others to build on previous work. In an increasingly digital world, the science community accesses and uses relevant scientific resources that have been obtained from digital repositories, data centers, and archives, as well as from traditional sources such as publishers of journal articles. Digital repositories need to establish capabilities, which provide access to and enable the use of digital resources. These resources are needed by the science community to improve and build o! n the efforts of others. Digital repositories that provide free and unrestricted access to scientific data and research-related information can reduce the barriers to science. By reducing these barriers they will be able to offer opportunities for members of the scientific community to pursue research questions and challenges that were previously unapproachable. These may include opportunities for researchers to gather data from other domains and support interdisciplinary research. Opportunities to use the data products and services offered by digital repositories also can contribute to the development of the scientific community and to the emergence of new areas of study

Authentic Learning in the Research Data Curation Classroom

We explore the provision of authentic learning through curation of scientific research data collections as preparation for information professionals. Hands on experience with curating a research data collection is provided in a graduate level classroom. Students gain insight into work with research data through online exploration of a data repository as well as via contact with a repository information professional. Four major elements of a student data collection curation project are described: selecting a data collection, developing a draft data curation plan, keeping a data collection activity log, and summarizing via formative and summative reports. The data curation project provided an experience mix of the curation culture and its services with data generating research cultures and their emergent practices.ye

Federated Space-Time Query for Earth Science Data Using OpenSearch Conventions

This slide presentation reviews a Space-time query system that has been developed to assist the user in finding Earth science data that fulfills the researchers needs. It reviews the reasons why finding Earth science data can be so difficult, and explains the workings of the Space-Time Query with OpenSearch and how this system can assist researchers in finding the required data, It also reviews the developments with client server systems

Scientific Knowledge Mobilization: Co-evolution of Data Products and Designated Communities

Digital data are accumulating rapidly, yet issues relating to data production remain unexamined. Data sharing efforts in particular are nascent, disunited and incomplete. We investigate the development of data products tailored for diverse communities with differing knowledge bases. We explore not the technical aspects of how, why, or where data are made available, but rather the socio-scientific aspects influencing what data products are created and made available for use. These products differ from compact data summaries often published in journals. We report on development by a national data center of two data collections describing the changing polar environment. One collection characterizes sea ice products derived from satellite remote sensing data and development unfolds over three decades. The second collection characterizes the Greenland Ice Sheet melt where development of an initial collection of data products over a period of several months was informed by insights gained from earlier experience. In documenting the generation of these two collections, a data product development cycle supported by a data product team is identified as key to mobilizing scientific knowledge. The collections reveal a co-evolution of data products and designated communities where community interest may be triggered by events such as environmental disturbance and new modes of communication. These examples of data product development in practice illustrate knowledge mobilization in the earth sciences; the collections create a bridge between data producers and a growing number of audiences interested in making evidence-based decisions.

Advances in Spatial Data Infrastructure, Acquisition, Analysis, Archiving and Dissemination

The authors review recent contributions to the state-of-thescience and benign proliferation of satellite remote sensing, spatial data infrastructure, near-real-time data acquisition, analysis on high performance computing platforms, sapient archiving, multi-modal dissemination and utilization for a wide array of scientific applications. The authors also address advances in Geoinformatics and its growing ubiquity, as evidenced by its inclusion as a focus area within the American Geophysical Union (AGU), European Geosciences Union (EGU), as well as by the evolution of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society's (GRSS) Data Archiving and Distribution Technical Committee (DAD TC)

Connecting Researchers to Data Repositories in the Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences

The Repository Finder tool was developed to help researchers in the domain of Earth, space, and environmental sciences to identify appropriate repositories where they can deposit their research data and to promote practices that implement the FAIR Principles, encouraging progress toward sharing data that are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. Requirements for the design of the tool were gathered through a series of workshops and working groups as a part of the Enabling FAIR Data initiative led by the American Geophysical Union that included the development of a decision tree that researchers may follow in selecting a data repository, interviews with domain repository managers, and usability testing. The tool is hosted on the web by DataCite and enables a researcher to query all data repositories by keyword or to view a list of domain repositories that accept data for deposit, support open access, and provide persistent identifiers. Metadata records from the re3data.org registry of research data repositories and the returned results highlight repositories that have achieved trustworthy digital repository certification through a formal procedure such as the CoreTrust Seal

A Discussion of Value Metrics for Data Repositories in Earth and Environmental Sciences

Despite growing recognition of the importance of public data to the modern economy and to scientific progress, long-term investment in the repositories that manage and disseminate scientific data in easily accessible-ways remains elusive. Repositories are asked to demonstrate that there is a net value of their data and services to justify continued funding or attract new funding sources. Here, representatives from a number of environmental and Earth science repositories evaluate approaches for assessing the costs and benefits of publishing scientific data in their repositories, identifying various metrics that repositories typically use to report on the impact and value of their data products and services, plus additional metrics that would be useful but are not typically measured. We rated each metric by (a) the difficulty of implementation by our specific repositories and (b) its importance for value determination. As managers of environmental data repositories, we find that some of the most easily obtainable data-use metrics (such as data downloads and page views) may be less indicative of value than metrics that relate to discoverability and broader use. Other intangible but equally important metrics (e.g., laws or regulations impacted, lives saved, new proposals generated), will require considerable additional research to describe and develop, plus resources to implement at scale. As value can only be determined from the point of view of a stakeholder, it is likely that multiple sets of metrics will be needed, tailored to specific stakeholder needs. Moreover, economically based analyses or the use of specialists in the field are expensive and can happen only as resources permit

Characterization of transient and progressive pulmonary fibrosis by spatially correlated phase contrast microCT, classical histopathology and atomic force microscopy

: Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) is a severe and progressive condition in which the lung becomes scarred over time resulting in pulmonary function impairment. Classical histopathology remains an important tool for micro-structural tissue assessment in the diagnosis of PF. A novel workflow based on spatial correlated propagation-based phase-contrast micro computed tomography (PBI-microCT), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and histopathology was developed and applied to two different preclinical mouse models of PF - the commonly used and well characterized Bleomycin-induced PF and a novel mouse model for progressive PF caused by conditional Nedd4-2 KO. The aim was to integrate structural and mechanical features from hallmarks of fibrotic lung tissue remodeling. PBI-microCT was used to assess structural alteration in whole fixed and paraffin embedded lungs, allowing for identification of fibrotic foci within the 3D context of the entire organ and facilitating targeted microtome sectioning of planes of interest for subsequent histopathology. Subsequently, these sections of interest were subjected to AFM to assess changes in the local tissue stiffness of previously identified structures of interest. 3D whole organ analysis showed clear morphological differences in 3D tissue porosity between transient and progressive PF and control lungs. By integrating the results obtained from targeted AFM analysis, it was possible to discriminate between the Bleomycin model and the novel conditional Nedd4-2 KO model using agglomerative cluster analysis. As our workflow for 3D spatial correlation of PBI, targeted histopathology and subsequent AFM is tailored around the standard procedure of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue specimens, it may be a powerful tool for the comprehensive tissue assessment beyond the scope of PF and preclinical research