NSDI Interim Progress Report

NSDI Interim Progress Review and Meeting, Portland, OR (5-18-99)

OLYMPIC PENINSULA CLEARINGHOUSE and NSDI NODE

new address June 2001: (http://www.onrc.washington.edu/clearinghouse/)
(http://cathedral.cfr.washington.edu/~chouse)

Please also refer to:
(http://www.onrc.washington.edu/clearinghouse/proposals/ccap1.html)

Confidential Section

Status of Project

Milestone: Develop materials for workshops and hold workshops

• In February 1999, the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) hosted the conference "Putting Olympic Peninsula on the Map," to mark the official opening of the Clearinghouse and to solicit input on how ONRC can better serve the region in geographic information management and GIS support. The conference, which attracted 65 attendees from a variety of agencies and institutions, has helped to generate additional support and contributions for the Olympic Peninsula node. We are now addressing comments from meeting participants relative to Clearinghouse design and content.

• Jeff Holm (WA Geographic Information Council) has provided metadata training at Grays Harbor College. Additional training is planned at four educational facilities in 1999. There was also a metadata session at the conference cited above. A workshop brochure has been developed and will be revised following the June 1999 UCGIS-FGDC meeting on metadata standards.

• In response to suggestions at our GIS conference, we are developing a theme-based organization of metadata and data incorporating NSDI Framework layers. We are also providing a technical support component, including projection and data-format transformation tools. In addition, we are working with the WA State Geospatial Clearinghouse to include metadata and data in a geographically searchable interface.

• There are now 225 metadata records in the Clearinghouse, all of which are FGDC and NBII compliant. We have obtained an additional 373 records which need to be reformatted to make them FGDC compliant. Metadata have been contributed by 36 different contributors.

• The entire Olympic National Forest public database is online (75 records). Geospatial and biological metadata were compiled for each dataset. Datasets are accessible from a hyperlink using FTP from each metadata record for data that we have permission to distribute.

• Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary geospatial and biological metadata is online (12 records). There may be opportunities for additional metadata from the Sanctuary.

• Olympic National Park geospatial and biological metadata currently consists of 7 records. Park staff has devoted little time to this effort, hence the small number of records; however, we now have a list of potential topics for metadata and will continue to work with the park.

• The Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has a direct link to their metadata on the WA State Geospatial Clearinghouse node. We may link our Clearinghouse to the completed metadata records that correspond to DNR's Olympic Region metadata on the State Clearinghouse.

• The entire database for the Grays Harbor Regional Planning Commission is online. Metadata for Mason County will be contributed soon.

• Native American contributions - Ten metadata records from the Hoh describe their work in watershed analyses of the Hoh River. The Jamestown S'Klallam contributed their GIS layer for irrigation canals. The Lower Elwha Klallam contributed metadata for reservation boundaries and roads. The Makah and Quinault are also potential contributors.

• Private land owners / timber companies - Some private forest management companies view the Clearinghouse as an opportunity to state their commitment to responsible stewardship of natural resources. Merrill and Ring contributed metadata for public recreation. Rayonier is committed to contributing metadata. Weyerhaeuser, which sent a representative to our recent GIS conference, has now expressed interest in participating.

• A clearinghouse maintenance manual is being cooperatively developed by our project team and ONRC. We have made considerable progress in documenting the procedures and protocols that will go in this manual, including technical details of metadata compilation, quality assurance, and file transfers

Issues affecting completion

• A major concern is the lack of time commitment by agencies contributing metadata. Our approach is to prepare metadata for contributors by having technicians work directly with them, but even this approach encounters significant delays. Agency senior staff would benefit from "metadata presentations" to show the value in data documentation and sharing to produce an agency and regional resource of geographic information.

• It takes significant time to identify and work with individual researchers, especially in academia. This group very rarely develops metadata on their own, even when it is required by their funding agencies.

• Older but significant datasets are often difficult to document, because dataset lineage suffers from institutional memory losses, staff changes, poor archiving, etc.

Information to Share

Lessons Learned

• The only effective way to obtain metadata from most organizations and individuals is to have technicians work directly with them-a "metadata hit team." It is not enough to request metadata, provide software for metadata compilation, or even provide metadata training. Most people are overjoyed to have someone compile the metadata for them.

• It is difficult to obtain metadata from private forest management firms due to the proprietary nature of most of their data. Working with these companies requires a great deal of diplomacy. We have emphasized the value of public relations through contributions of metadata that focus on recreation, transportation systems, and general resource stewardship.

• In approaching Native American tribes, it is critical to first listen to their needs, then proceed to discussions of specific datasets. Although most larger tribes now have some GIS and data management capability, management objectives differ considerably. For example, on some of the larger reservations where forest land is managed for timber production, data are considered to be proprietary, and the likelihood of sharing data is less.

We would like to learn:

• How others deal with sensitive issues related to sharing data and contributing metadata, particularly in cases in which data are considered proprietary.

• About policies regarding metadata, data distribution, data copyrights, FOIA, and clearinghouse participation by federal agencies and other organizations.

• How others deal with data transfer issues between different systems and metadata software.