Project Proposal:
Geography Division Eastern Region Gulf of Mexico DIMS

Partners/Collaborators and Affiliations: Federal and State agencies and academic institutions involved in the Gulf of Mexico region

Proposal Submission Date: September 2003

Problem: The Gulf of Mexico region is defined by environmental and economic conditions that transcend state and country boundaries, representing a host of critical integrating and conflicting factors such as mineral resources, fisheries production, ecological habitats for marine life and waterfowl, and human demands with subsequent anthropologic impacts. As more research is being conducted in the region to help understand these conditions and factors, it becomes crucial to make research results, information, and data accessible to all. Understanding the gulf’s ecosystems and its changes is dependent on the quality of documenting and modeling the interrelationships of physical, chemical, and biological parameters. From several workshops (Central region’s 2000 Focus Areas and the USGS Integrated Database Tampa 2000), the need for a USGS clearinghouse for gulf information was the number one recommendation. With the four USGS disciplines working in the region and the repeatedly expressed need for an easily accessible information outlet, a holistic and integrated approach can be taken to achieve such a goal.

Objective: The goal of the DIMS for the Gulf of Mexico region is to provide a comprehensive collection of hydrologic, geologic, biologic, and spatial information for onshore and offshore ecosystems through a database driven Internet system. A similar and very successful system, created and maintained by the USGS National Wetlands Research Center and the Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies, is the USGS Gulf of Mexico Integrated Science website (http://gulfsci.usgs.gov). Although the existing site has specific geographic focus areas (Tampa Bay, Galveston Bay, and Coastal Louisiana), the proposed DIMS will enhance this system and expand into the offshore gulf regions.

Scope: To accomplish this goal of creating a data information management system for the Gulf of Mexico, several components for the system will be developed over a 2 year period. The design and implementation of a data driven website and relational database consisting of geological, ecological, biological, chemical information, and spatial data will be the primary task for this project. The integrated database will be searchable by keyword, data type, location, and other criteria as the data dictate.

Approach: The development and implementation of the DIMS is a 2 year phased project, beginning with the acquisition of data sets along with discovery of researchers’ needs for a data management system. Input from researchers will only benefit the development of the DIMS’s archiving, indexing, and searching capabilities and will increase the usefulness of the system. Within the first year, standards will be developed for the storage of data sets to include the creation of metadata for all data sets. Federally compliant metadata will serve as a means of documenting data sets, which will be distributed online, and will be searchable, and of archiving those data sets that are sensitive in nature (not distributed). The DIMS will be paired with a relational database management system for storing data products developed from gulf research projects. The relational database will provide the back-end to the Web interface. External Network Attached Storage (NAS) will handle the large data sets, such as imagery, and an Arc Interactive Mapper Server (IMS) application will provide users with the geographic information system (GIS) functionality. Additionally, special projects for the DIMS will be developed by the various Disciplines to enhance and showcase specific science and technology datasets.

Benefits: The sharing of and accessibility to gulf-wide data will be beneficial to all researchers working in the region, to resource managers, to policy makers, and to the general public. This clearinghouse of information and data will encourage the development of a synthesis and interpretation phase for the Gulf of Mexico Integrated Science Project and simultaneously act as a foundation for an integrated ecosystem modeling component of the gulf region.

Outcome/Products: The DIMS will provide researchers, managers, and the public with: data and information management system (DIMS) for the various USGS disciplines, accessible through the USGS Integrated Science website; user-friendly means of communicating and distributing information on the Gulf of Mexico region, with emphasis on the USGS’s Status and Trends Monitoring Programs. For BRD, the DIMS will promote and enable us to take the first step to: inventory major long-term biological monitoring activities and the methods and protocols utilized by them; identify major data sets of biological status and trend; and identify major data repositories of biological status and trend information. clearinghouse for study results, allowing for a comprehensive archive of data products related to Gulf of Mexico region and Outer Continental Shelf (OCS); the ability to view and manipulate spatial data from the desktop, or “GIS on the web”, and; will provide a foundation for a multiphase synthesis and interpretation activities and future modeling efforts.

Timeline: For the first year, activities will include: location of and acquisition of USGS data sets; initial development and design of the relational database component, the Web based IMS system and the GIS component;
discovery of researchers’ data needs; and special Discipline projects for inclusion into the database.

For the second year, activities will include:

• beta testing and refinement of the database and GIS components;
• solicitation of user input of the system;
• additions and/or modifications of the database as data are discovered and acquired; and
• scoping session for the development of the synthesis and interpretation phase and the modeling component.