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6: Data Integration

Brian Reece, U.S. Geological Survey, Texas Water Science Center, Austin, Texas

One of the core data integration activities in the Water Resources Discipline (WRD) is the National Water Information System (NWIS). NWIS stores data collected, analyzed, and reported at more than 1.7 million sites by the USGS and other agencies, including many Gulf Coast agencies. NWIS contains billions of time-series records for surface water, groundwater, water quality, and atmospheric data; discrete ground-water levels / well construction information; and discrete water-quality samples. Water use data are almost entirely integrated into NWIS from various state and local agencies.

NWIS is a major information system investment, making it a critical database for the nation and serving as a permanent archive for this integrated information. NWISWeb is the web interface of NWIS and includes many integrated, derived products such as WaterWatch, GroundWaterWatch, and WaterQualityWatch. Comprehensive web services are planned for NWISWeb to support numerous third-party data integration efforts.

WRD integrates NWIS data with data from other Federal agencies such as the National Weather Service and US Army Corps of Engineers, and numerous State and local agencies to facilitate USGS science. For example, USGS and EPA are working to better integrate STORET and NWIS and provide an integrated web service. USGS is working with the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) to facilitate the overall acquisition of hydrologic data. An aquatic ecological data storage and retrieval system is being developed to integrate ecological information, most of which exists in many individual project files.

Numerous state and locally-based data integration projects supporting Gulf Coast science rely on WRD national programs such as NWIS. Several of these projects will be highlighted including demonstration of the importance of spatial / tabular data integration and the scientific benefits this type of integration allows.

Contact Information: Brian Reece, U.S. Geological Survey, Texas Water Science Center, 8027 Exchange Dr, Austin, TX 78754; phone: 512-927-3573; fax: 512-927-3590; email: bdreece@usgs.gov

Shawn Dadisman, James Flocks, and Robert Wertz

U.S. Geological Survey, Florida Integrated Science Center, St. Petersburg, Florida

The USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program (CMGP) has developed several databases to manage decades of data and information collected throughout State and Federal waters. InfoBank, usSEABED, LASED, and XSTORMS databases are important Gulf of Mexico data resource tools and represent a long-term CMGP commitment to data preservation, access, and integration.
InfoBank is an online field-activity catalog spanning seven decades of CMGP-related work (http://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/infobank/). The catalog holds information about past and scheduled fieldwork and links to related data and information products. InfoBank also contains over 5800 metadata records automatically harvested by the Geospatial One-Stop (GOS), (http://www.geodata.gov/) portal.

The usSEABED database is a compilation of geologic, acoustic, geochemical, geotechnical, and biological data about the seafloor collected from numerous sources. The database combines analytical and descriptive data into comma-delimited tables for easy use with other software or databases. The Gulf of Mexico usSEABED database is published on DVD or online (http://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/2006/146/).

The Louisiana Sedimentary and Environmental Database (LASED) was developed by the USGS and cooperators to manage decades of geologic data from the Louisiana coastal zone (http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/lased/). The database allows integration of various data types including: sediment core and sample data, geochemical analyses, sub-bottom profiles, and raster-image maps. All data are integrated with spatial and attribute information that allows processing and visualization using standard Geographic Information System (GIS) and Internet browsing tools. LASED also provides a template for similar data-management efforts, like the recently developed Mississippi-Alabama Shelf Database (MASH).

XSTORMS was developed to manage and analyze coastal oblique aerial photographs and videos collected before and after extreme storms, associated lidar mission information, and storm meteorological data. Data are spatially linked so pre- and post-storm comparisons are made quickly and shared electronically from the project website (http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/). Exported post-Katrina photographs are also available via InfoBank in KML format.

LASED, XSTORMS, and usSEABED data are stored in an enterprise geodatabase, which is a crucial CMGP resource. Using standardized logs and data-management techniques enables rapid processing of new data, easy metadata capture, swift geodatabase population, and publishing of data archives. Recent technology allows digitized analog-data integration. Benefits to geodatabase storage include: data analysis through spatial or attribute parameters, centralized storage and multi-user access, routine backups, and offsite storage or replication. Datasets can be linked to many resources like InfoBank, online publications, or project websites, and integrated with many additional databases via Web or Internet Map Server and Web portals such as GOS. Creating a distributed data-management scheme using these methods ensures data preservation, wide distribution, and the ability to maximize data integration and interoperability.

Contact information: Shawn Dadisman, U.S. Geological Survey, Florida Integrated Science Center, 600 4th St. South, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701; phone: 727-803-8747; email: sdadisman@usgs.gov

G. Snedden, C. Conzelmann, G.D. Steyer, R. Raynie, and S. Wilson

U.S. Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Coastal Restoration Field Station, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

The Coastwide Reference Monitoring System - Wetlands (CRMS-Wetlands) is collecting, analyzing and reporting on a consistent suite of water, vegetation, soil and spatial variables at 390 sites across coastal Louisiana. These data are used to evaluate coastal baseline conditions as well as restoration and rehabilitation efforts. These evaluations can occur over a multiple scales, ranging from site-specific scales of less than1 km2 to tens of thousands of km2 over a 20-yr period. CRMS-Wetlands uses coastal scientists to develop analytical tools in partnership with database managers and information technology specialists such that they can be visualized through web services (http://www.lacoast.gov/crms2/). This partnership allows for the development of data automations that optimize data processing and maximize analytical flexibility of large datasets. It also provides opportunities to present and synthesize scientific data in a manner that is visually informative. The development of a hydrologic index that describes the suitability of hydrologic characteristics to specific wetland habitat will be presented to illustrate how large datasets are integrated and visualized. The hydrologic index is used with other ecological indices as a report card to assess the effectiveness of restoration efforts and provide an overall indication of wetland condition at various spatial and temporal scales.

Contact Information: Gregg Snedden, USGS National Wetlands Research Center, Coastal Restoration Field Station P.O. Box 25098, Baton Rouge, LA 70894 ; phone : 225 578 7583 ; email : sneddeng@usgs.gov

Chris Cretini, U.S. Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, Lafayette, Louisiana

The Gulf of Mexico region is defined by environmental and economic conditions which represent a host of critical integrating factors such as mineral resources, fisheries production, ecological habitats for marine life and waterfowl, and human demands. The USGS National Wetlands Research Center has partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop the Priority Habitat Information System (PHINS) as part of the Identification and Characterization of Priority Habitats task within the Gulf of Mexico Alliance. PHINS incorporates a distributed data architecture and consists of three components: an enterprise metadata application to create and manage metadata, an online catalog to search metadata and find source data, and a geospatial data viewer to visualize habitat data using web mapping services (WMS). The USGS NWRC has worked with USACE and NOAA to develop the blueprint on which the distributed architecture is based. PHINS will initially be populated with seagrass datasets and be expanded to include datasets which meet the needs of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance.

Contact Information: Chris Cretini, U.S. Geological Survey, National Wetlands Research Center, 700 Cajundome Blvd., Lafayette, Louisiana 70506; phone: 337-266-8647; fax: 337-266-8621; email: cretinic@usgs.gov