Ocean Information Services 



The increasing quantities of environmental and biological data being 

 acquired by Federal programs have led to strong emphasis on improving 

 data management concepts and equipment. NOAA's Environmental Data 

 Service and its associated World Data Centers are the national focus for 

 this effort. 



The Environmental Data Service comprises the National Oceanographic 

 Data Center (NODC), National Climatic Center (NCC), National Geo- 

 physical Data Center (NGDC), Aeronomy and Space Data Center, 

 Environmental Science Information Center, and the Laboratory for 

 Environmental Data Research. Several Data Centers have collocated World 

 Data Center subcenters, including World Data Center A, Oceanography. All 

 marine geophysical data, formerly held by NODC, were turned over to the 

 NGDC in 1971. NODC continues to be responsible for all other forms of 

 oceanographic data and for the National Marine Data Inventory (NAMDI) . 



The Environmental Data Service has established a Great Lakes special 

 project group within NODC. This group, to be relocated to Detroit, will 

 plan and eventually establish a central NOAA repository for environmental 

 data associated with the Great Lakes and is active in the International Field 

 Year for the Great Lakes ( IFYGL) . 



Approximately 85 percent of NOAA's data customers are non-NOAA 

 scientists from home and abroad, other Federal agencies, industry, and the 

 general public. In 1971, considerable progress was made in the consolida- 

 tion and automation of marine data and information services; the develop- 

 ment of a necessary central reference system, ENDEX (Environmental 

 Data Index) and OASIS (Oceanic and Atmospheric Scientific Information 

 System) ; and such national and international programs as the Barbados 

 Oceanographic and Meteorological Analysis Project (BOMAP) and the 

 International Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE) . In addition, NOAA is 

 actively strengthening interagency coordination and cooperation in the en- 

 vironmental sciences through bilateral and multilateral agreements and 

 arrangements with other agencies, including the Corps of Engineers, EPA, 

 NSF, and the Smithsonian Institution. 



NOAA and EPA began a cooperative pilot project to combine EPA re- 

 search information and monitoring data with NOAA's Environmental Data 

 Service data inventories and bibliographic reference in a single "browse- 

 oriented" information retrieval system. Reference files for oceanographic 

 and meteorological data and literature for the the New York Bight area 

 were loaded into the information retrieval system of the EPA Water Quality 

 Office. The two agencies are also working toward establishing mechanisms 

 for the exchange of data and information between NODC and the EPA 

 STORET (storage and retrieval) data file. These interactions will support 

 and complement the NOAA-EPA oceanic and coastal zone marine-pollution 

 data exchange. 



In February 1971, a temporary data archive was established to service 

 user requests for some 26 processed data products resulting from the 

 Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment (BOMEX). The 



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