The NASA GSFC Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC): serving user needs for free access to EOS data, products and information

The Earth Observing System (EOS) involves a series of satellites that orbit the Earth, carrying advanced instruments that have a broad range of spatial and spectral resolutions, and operate passively and actively over the electromagnetic spectrum. The EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) captures the satellite data, generates useful Earth science data products, and makes the products available to users in the U.S and throughout the world. The data are available from eight EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), two affiliated data centers, and a growing number of international partners. These data centers process, archive, and/or distribute the EOS data, value-added products, and other NASA Earth science data, and provide full support to users of these data. They also provide services tailored to the specific needs of their individual discipline user communities, and together they provide coordinated services to support interdisciplinary Earth Science research. Within the NASA/GSFC/DAAC the Hydrology Team is the principal group responsible for archiving and distributing the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite data and products. The Goddard-DAAC also provides a variety of data and products from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) project and from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) project.

Our presentation will concentrate on the various methods developed and adopted by the Goddard-DAAC for free data distribution to, and information handling for, the global environmental community, including the use of Internet/World Wide Web and direct broadcast. Next we will describe recent effort in the implementation a Web GIS for visualizing data and a Data Mining process for knowledge discovery. Finally we will describe several current user-tailored, value-added products, data sub-setting and gridding, and the development of interactive and user friendly tools and services for public data and information access and management.