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South Florida Ecosystem Program Database Development

By Jo Anne Stapleton, Roy Sonenshein, and Bob Halley

PURPOSE

The South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Program is an intergovernmental effort to reestablish and maintain the ecosystem of south Florida. One element of the restoration effort is the development of a firm scientific basis for resource decision making. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is one of the agencies that provides scientific information as part of the South Florida Ecosystem Program (SFEP). The program, which was begun in fiscal year 1995, provides multidisciplinary hydrologic, cartographic, geologic, and biologic data that relate to the mainland of south Florida, the Florida Bay, and the Florida Keys and Reef ecosystems.

A database with established transfer formats, definitions, and spatial registration greatly promotes dissemination of scientific data and information in a cost-effective manner.

Shared databases may help elevate the quality and quantity of available information. By acquiring data from the database, individual users can certify and evaluate data. With appropriate management oversight, this generally leads to improved consistency and increased reliability in the database.

PROJECT GOAL

The goal is to provide a metadatabase for storing and maintaining information on reports and tabular and geospatial datasets that have been produced by participating Federal, State, regional, and local agencies. Metadata consist of information that characterizes data. Metadata are used to provide documentation for data products. In essence, metadata answer who, what, when, where, why, and how about every facet of the data that are being documented. For most datasets, geospatial data itself can be downloaded from various servers on the network. Pre-existing datasets relevant to the restoration initiative will be included. Metadata that describe the spatial and temporal data will be maintained using the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata (June 8, 1994).

The metadatabase will describe a variety of data types, including analog and digital maps, reports, abstracts, executive summaries, articles, images, fact sheets, and tabular hydrologic, geologic, and biologic data.

Information in the database will be available to customers by the most modern means, including the Internet and CD-ROM.

Typical software interconnections required to
provide geospatial data on the internet

[larger version]

BACKGROUND

Providing metadata is the first step in a process that leads the community to understand, organize, maintain, share, and provide spatial data.

In April 1994, the President signed Executive Order 12906, Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: The National Spatial Data Infrastructure. This executive order instructed Federal agencies to use the FGDC standard to document new geospatial data beginning in January 1995 and to provide these metadata to the public through the National Geo-spatial Data Clearinghouse.

The clearinghouse concept has at least two levels of implementation. At the basic level, a clearinghouse site is part of an electronic network and has informa-tion about geospatial data (metadata) that originate from a particular organization. The site provides a searching mechanism that allows the public to search and retrieve metadata based on particular properties of the data (for example, location, theme, author.) The returned information (metadata elements) describes basic information, location, quality statements, format, attributes, currentness, and distribution information.

At an even more useful level, the site adds a convenient mechanism for retrieving the geospatial data itself through the online file transfer protocol (ftp) process. Further, the clearinghouse could provide browse versions (filtered subsets) of datasets that can be viewed before file transfer. This will ensure that the dataset truly contains the kind or extent of information that is needed.

RESEARCH PLAN

• Develop an FGDC-compliant meta-database creation and update tool that is customized for the SFEP.
• Develop and maintain a World Wide Web (WWW) site that describes SFEP projects, provides access to SFEP products, and provides links to other SFEP WWW sites and to WWW sites for other agencies with information relevant to the south Florida ecosystem. Perform a user-needs assessment of SFEP scientists to assist in the development of the web site.
• Develop a metadatabase for other USGS data, both historical and current, relevant to the south Florida ecosystem.
• Develop a tool that allows users to search the metadatabase. Establish links to other sites that provide data relevant to the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Program, including other Federal, State, regional, and local agencies, and non-governmental organizations.

PARTNERSHIPS

The program is being developed as a partnership among all parties interested in restoration of the south Florida ecosystem. Participation must be interactive, with users recognizing their responsibility to provide feedback that upgrades the database.

When the metadatabase is online, the public will have access to information that describes the availability of data, its characteristics, and its accessibility.

There is a high level of interest in the south Florida restoration community. An online means of adding and updating information (with appropriate approvals) will broaden the level of participation by attracting other users and new data contributors who are outside of the restoration community but interested in south Florida issues generally.

After the first year, participation will be widened to include other Federal, State, and local agencies as well as non-governmental partners.

For more information:

Caribbean-Florida Water Science Center
U.S. Geological Survey
3321 College Avenue
Davie, FL 33314

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