FY 1998 NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program
FINAL REPORT

Project Title: A National Geospatial Clearinghouse for the Oregon Coast

Lead PI: Dawn Wright, Oregon State University

Cooperating Organizations: Tillamook Coastal Watershed Resource Center, Pacific Northwest Coastal Ecosystems Regional Study, Ecotrust (formerly Interrain Pacific), State Service Center for GIS (State of Oregon Department of Administrative Services)

Additional Collaborator: Northwest Alliance for Computational Science & Engineering, Oregon State University

Project URL: buccaneer.geo.orst.edu

Final Report URL:buccaneer.geo.orst.edu/docs/final.html

Activities and Findings

• A searchable Clearinghouse node has been set up with a Z39.50 server (Isite v. 2.06a) that has over 100 metadata records indexed. Record include information about coastal and marine resource thematic data for Oregon, as well as embedded URL linkages to data throughout the state.

• We have initiated the development of a comprehensive database of metadata for geographic data on the Oregon coast. Existing FGDC-compliant metadata and accompanying digital databases have been acquired from the cooperating organizations on the original grant, as well as from additional projects. Additional metadata acquired have been rendered FGDC-compliant.

• A comprehensive web site has been constructed for the project, that includes not only downloadable metadata and data, but tools for submitting additional data (for which our project will create FGDC- compliant metadata), linkages to interactive, online data sets elsewhere in the state of Oregon, information on the cooperating organizations on the grant, digital images and visualizations of the Oregon coast and continental shelf, and documents and publications related to the grant. In addition the site links to a web-based discussion forum open to anyone in the state (research, manager, teacher, schoolkid, web wanderer, etc.) who has interest in the clearinghouse and would like to contribute an idea or comment.

• The clearinghouse has recently been publicized to all potential participants throughout the state so that we may add more coastal and marine data and metadata. We have contacted all the agencies listed in our original proposal: federal, state, county offices and agencies, confederated tribes, research programs, and conservation councils.

• Presentations were made at national and regional GIS conferences agreed upon between the FGDC and project personnel (i.e., a Coastal and Marine Geography paper session at the 1999 Association of American Geographers meeting in Hawaii, and the Ocean GIS special exhibition at the 1998 ESRI User Conference in San Diego).

• This project is now serving as one of the testbeds for a new project funded by the UCGIS to improve the usability of the national geospatial data clearinghouse (NGDC) gateways (see www.nacse.org.mhs. Our web site is being evaluated in terms of user friendliness for searching and downloading data and metadata. This is related to an interesting dichotomy that is emerging: searching and querying metadata on the web sites of individual clearinghouse nodes vs. the NGDC gateway.

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Challenges

The original grant included a cost share of $82,201. Unfortunately we ran into problems with two of the parties that agreed to contribute cost share, but the P.I. and her graduate students were able to contribute additional effort to cover most of this. Also, the Pacific Northwest Coastal Ecosystems Regional Study cost-shared $32,129 rather than the originally proposed $29,098. The specifics:

1. One of the secondary goals of the project was to serve as a testbed for the new shoreline data standard in development by the FGDC Bathymetric Subcommittee. As a cost share contribution to the project Millington Lockwood of the NOAA National Ocean Service, aided by Cindy Fowler of the NOAA Coastal Services Center, was going to come and present a workshop covering the basics of the draft shoreline standard and to assist us in defining the level of effort and steps required to implement the shoreline aspects of the Oregon coast clearinghouse. Unfortunately Millington Lockwood was diagnosed with cancer and recently passed away.

2. Due to staff reductions, the State Service Center for GIS had to fold up the majority of its operations and was unable to complete its portion of the cooperative agreement. The center did provide $650 worth of in-kind support on the project in October, 1998. This consisted of ten hours creating, updating, documenting and maintaining metadata on the State Service Center for GIS web site, which the clearinghouse web site links to.

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Future Activities

• A manuscript will be written for submission to the either the Professional Geographer or Ocean and Coastal Management. emphasizing unique aspects of the clearinghouse node, documentation of use by Oregon coast stakeholders, and applications in coastal resource issues and management.

• Once participation in the clearinghouse by agencies other than the original cooperators a framework (database structure) document will be completed, as well as protocols for adding additional data layers, metadata, and URLs.

• In cooperation with the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science & Engineering (NACSE) we are working on a new, user-configurable metadata entry tool for our site that may supercede the FGDC's tool and provide more adequate long-term documentation of spatial data sets.

• We hope to develop an online mapping tool for Oregon coastal data. The application will enable users to create digital maps over the web using geographic data and metadata stored on our servers. Though internet map servers are not nearly as robust as desktop GISs, they provide a quick, effective, and often entertaining means by which to view and manipulate spatial data (and accompanying metadata) before making the decision to download to a local system.

• Once we build it, how do we get them to come? We hope to do a fairly thorough evaluation of the usage of the clearinghouse web site (i.e., site statistics, number of hits, from what hosts, etc.), and will explore additional ways to spur its growth, utility, and influence in the state of Oregon and the broader coastal resource management community.

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Education and Outreach

The project is providing OSU Master's thesis projects for Brian Ward and Gillien Duvall. They are both learning about the NSDI and the FGDC content standard for metadata. Brian installed and configured the Isite software and designed the clearinghouse web site. His thesis project describes and evaluates these activities, as well as web mapping of metadata. Gillien has researched the various tools used for the creation and management of metadata in relation to GIS and is creating metadata documents for clearinghouse participants. Her thesis project tests and compares various procedures for metadata organization, creation, and "ingest" (reading in of existing metadata in non-FGDC format and converting it to FGDC format) in an effort to determine what methods work best for what kinds of coastal data sets. Both theses will be available electronically on the clearinghouse web site.

Publications

see buccaneer.geo.orst.edu/docs/

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