INTER-AGENCY COMMITTEE ON MARINE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (IACMST) |
National Marine Environmental Data (MED) Co-ordinator |
ANNUAL REPORT 1998 - SUMMARY |
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Introduction |
This summary covers the second full year of activities of the National Marine Environmental Data (MED) Co-ordinator. The post is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and hosted by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC). In addition, five Government Departments are contributing to the running costs of the post. The role of the MED Co-ordinator is to implement the day to day data activities of IACMST and to ensure that arrangements are in place for the optimum use of UK marine environmental data for both scientific research and wealth creation. An Advisory Group drawn from participating departments guides the work. Progress against each of the 1998 Action List items is summarised below. |
Developing and maintaining inventories of data |
One of the key requirements for providing an overview of marine environmental data is the production of data catalogues. During the year, updates have been received from MED Advisory Group members for the UK Directory of Marine Environmental Data Sets. Updates from other organisations are currently being sought, with the intention of publishing a new version of the MED Directory by mid-1999. The present version is available as an Adobe Acrobat document, as well as a searchable catalogue on the Web. In addition, the UK Cruise Inventory and UK Moored Current Meter Inventory will also be made available on the Web as searchable Directories by mid-1999. These Inventories are maintained under the Oracle RDBMS. The UK Cruise Inventory comprises over 2400 entries and the associated Cruise Summary Report database describes data collected on 4300 cruises. A new database has been designed for storing this information and software to load the historical data is currently under development. |
Developing data management guidelines |
An information note has been produced relating to guidelines for discarding/retaining data. This is available from the MED Web site. The document will be further developed now that the Natural History Museum has published a policy document relating to curation polices. Progress has been made towards holding a marine samples workshop. It is intended to hold the workshop at SOC. It will be organised jointly by BOSCOR (SOC) and the Natural History Museum. Several new initiatives relating to marine data management are now underway. These include: the Marine Life Information Network (MarLIN) at the Marine Biological Association (MBA); the British Ocean Sediment Core Repository (BOSCOR); SEISCAN (seismic reflection profiles) and SeaDOG (marine geophysics) - these three are based at SOC. They are described in more detail in the main report. |
Developing mechanisms to facilitate data exchange |
At the request of IACMST, the MED Advisory Group produced a revised and updated document relating to international data exchange mechanisms. This document is available on the MED Web site. A plan has been drawn up for submission of the backlog of oceanographic data to ICES and World Data Center-A for Oceanography. Already the situation is quite healthy with regard to data submission to ICES, since CEFAS and FRS submit their data annually. A start has also been made with outstanding NERC data and data from 35 cruises have been forwarded to ICES. Several historical data sets are in the process of being rescued. These are primarily temperature, salinity and nutrient data from the CCMS Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory, the CEFAS Lowestoft Laboratory and the Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC). Until now, these data have only been available in manuscript form. |
Raising the visibility of MED activities |
Two posters were produced for the IACMST display on-board RRS Discovery at EXPO98 and an Information Sheet describing the MED activities was produced for UK Oceanography. In addition, a short article was published in the new CCMS newsletter. This will form the basis for other articles. Improving cohesion of the MED network has been addressed by meetings of the MED Advisory Group, building up new contacts, visits by the Co-ordinator to government departments, responding to requests for information, data and advice relating to MED, and generally increasing networking amongst marine environmental data managers. |
A proposed Action List for 1999 is included in the main report. |
Lesley J. Rickards |