Title| Summary|Strategy|Impacts/Products|Collaborators/Clients|Task 1|Task 2 |Task 3|Task 4|Task 5|Task 6|Task 7

GEOLOGIC DIVISION CONTINUING PROJECT WORK PLAN - FL 2001

Task: 7

Task Leaders:

Title: Data synthesis-report writing and knowledge bank incorporation

Coastal and Marine Geology Programs

As the tenth largest river system in the world, and arguably also the most utilized, the Mississippi River has an amazingly brief history of being systematically monitored. For example, the first truly comprehensive study was concluded only in 1995 (Bob Meade's work). Nonetheless, much has been written about the Mississippi River in the form of scientific papers and grey literature.

This Task is designed to incorporate and format such past work as well as data/results acquired during Year-1 into a GIS-based knowledge bank. The format and approach for this process will be emulated from the South Florida SOFIA site, which has been very successful at integrating and deseminating a broad range of scientific information.

The overall objective of this task is to establish a web-based information bank that will address the following criteria:

1. provide a platform for a historic baseline which will aid in identifying future project needs and direction,
2. aid in the organization and book keeping of such a large interdisciplinary project,
3. eliminate redundancy in research activities in light of past efforts, and
4. provide the infrastructure to easily integrate this project into other USGS efforts on estuaries (e.g., Orem-Atlantic Estuaries, Kvenvolden-Pacific Estuaries, Yates-Tampa Bay).

This incorporation of the lower Mississippi River project into a knowledge bank will ultimately allow this project to become integrated into a national assessment of the environmental well-being of our Nation's estuaries and river/ocean mixing zones.

Work to be undertaken during the proposal year and a description of the methods and procedures:

Several ongoing and new projects from USGS Saint Petersburg will allocate resources from one task of their project to the development and construction of a web-based information bank. We intend on working closely with these tasks leaders to develop a knowledge bank that will be similarly structured and implemented. This compatibly will make it easier to disseminate and compare data/results from one project to another. In addition, state and federal agencies as well as academic institutions will also participate in producing such an information bank.

All information acquired in Tasks 1-6 will be formatted to be included in an interactive web-site. Because this information has a large component that can be spatially organized, much of this data will also be GIS-based. Construction of the web-sites will primarily be the responsibility of the web development team at Saint Petersburg, with a partnership through NMD (Rolla, Missouri).

Planned Outreach:

Some anticipated products of Task 7 include a comprehensive website, direct linkages and extensions to the research activities performed by the USGS WRD NASQAN, Tulane University, University of New Orleans, Louisiana State University, The Corps of Engineers and several additional state agencies.

Publications delivered/completed for this Task:

Publications planned for this task, to be submitted for publication in current or future fiscal years.

• To be determined (Wertz et al). , 2002, Web based HUB

Geographic area of task:

United States, Gulf Coastal States, LA

Accomplishments

Current year nonpublication accomplishments and outcomes:
We are in the process of creating a website that will become the project's hub. 'Spokes' that have been identified so far include: a data repository (internal and external access sites), an annotated bibliography, a bulletin board to describe current field/meeting activities, links to other coastal contaminant projects.

Title|Summary|Strategy|Impacts/Products|Collaborators/Clients|Task 1|Task 2 |Task 3|Task 4|Task 5|Task 6|Task 7