Ch. 7— Federal Programs for Collecting and Managing Oceanographic Data • 265 



nounces the availablility of such data sets and, if 

 demand warrants, the data are then sent to NGDC. 



Bureau of Mines 



While the Bureau of Mines (BOM) does not ac- 

 tively collect and archive EEZ data, BOM is a 

 prime user of information col- 

 lected by other groups. Programs 

 related to the EEZ include de- 

 velopment of technologies that 

 will permit recovery of mineral 

 deposits from the ocean floor, 

 studies of beneficiation and proc- 

 essing systems, economic analyses of mineral ex- 

 traction, and assessment of worldwide availability 

 of minerals essential to the economy and security 

 of the United States. 



National Aeronautics and 

 Space Administration 



The National Aeronautics and Space Adminis- 

 tration (NASA) flies a number of satellites carry- 

 1^ I ^ ^^ jk ing sensors (passive and active) 



I \J# y^^M \ that measure many ocean sur- 

 National Aeronautics and face properties including tem- 

 Space Administration perature, color, roughness, and 

 elevation. From these measurements, a number of 

 important properties of the ocean can be estimated, 

 including biological productivity, surface wind ve- 

 locity, bottom topography, and ocean currents. All 

 of these satellites obtain some small but significant 

 percentage of their data while over the EEZ. The 

 bulk of the ocean program data archived by NASA 

 is located at the National Space Science Data Cen- 

 ter at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, 

 Maryland, and at the NASA Ocean Data System 

 centered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, 

 California. Scientific analysis of the data is per- 

 formed by researchers at the two laboratories and 

 at universities around the country. 



Both laboratories are currently collecting EEZ- 

 related data. About 80 to 100 percent of the data 

 are digital with spatial scales of hundreds to thou- 

 Scinds of yards and temporal scales of hours to days. 

 Most of the data are stored in raw form on 27,000 

 reels of high-density magnetic tape. The time lag 

 between data sampling and reporting is between 

 one and two years; these data are available to 



The Navstar Global Positioning Systenn (GPS), developed 

 by the Department of Defense, Is the most precise radio 

 navigation system available. When fully operational, 

 18 GPS satellites will enable users to determine their 

 position within tens of meters anywhere in the world. 



Source: National Oceanic and Atmospiieric Administration 



Others. NASA acquires data at the rate of about 

 10'^ to 10'^ bytes per year, which is expected to in- 

 crease significantly in the future. 



NASA has developed pilot data management sys- 

 tems that have successfully demonstrated concepts 

 such as interactive access to data previewing and 

 ordering. These programs allow users to actually 

 view the data available; the programs will not be 

 fully operational before the early 1990s. 



The "NASA Science Internet" (NSI) program 

 was created in 1986 to coordinate and consolidate 

 the various discipline-oriented computer networks 

 used by NASA to provide its scientists with easier 

 access to data and computational resources and to 

 assist their inter-disciplinary collaboration and com- 

 munication. NSI is managed by the Information 



