266 • Marine Minerals: Exploring Our New Ocean Frontier 



Systems Office within NASA's Office of Science 

 and Applications. The Ames Research Center in 

 Sunnyvale, California, is responsible for technical 

 implementation of NSI. NSI services include con- 

 solidating circuit requests across NASA disciplines, 

 maintaining a database of science requirements, 

 disseminating information on network status and 

 relevant technology, and supporting the acquisi- 

 tion of network hardware and software. 



Science networks with the NSI system include 

 the Space Physics Analysis Network, the Astron- 

 omy Network (Astronet), the network for the Pi- 

 lot Land Data System, and the network planned 

 for the earth science program. Currendy, these net- 

 works support approximately 150 sites accom- 

 modating 2,000 scientists. Growth in use has been 

 20 to 40 percent each year across all science dis- 

 ciplines. NSI will coordinate links between NASA 

 networks and networks of other agencies as well, 

 such as NOAA, USGS, and NSF. 



The West Coast Time Series project converts raw 

 satellite data to ocean chlorophyll concentrations 

 and sea surface temperatures (useful for studies of 

 biological productivity and ocean circulation) in for- 

 mats agreed to by the scientific user community, 

 and provision has been made for efficient data dis- 

 tribution. 



Problems Handling NASA Data. — Users say it 

 is difficult to obtain complete and timely responses 

 to requests for satellite data.** This problem appears 

 to be due to lack of funds to develop and operate 

 efficient data archival and distribution facilities for 

 secondary users. 



It is currently impossible to get satellite data ar- 

 chives to copy very large data sets — thousands of 

 tapes — so the "archive" is basically a warehouse 

 of information with limited distribution capacity. 



U.S. Navy 



The U.S. Navy has a global marine data collec- 

 tion program that is among the largest in the world. 

 Data collection by the Navy is not necessarily fo- 



'*This problem was mentioned by many other agencies and educa- 

 tional institutions and is outlined in the 1982 NRC report Data Man- 

 agement and Computation, Vol. 1. 



cused in the U.S. EEZ; therefore it is difficult to 

 estimate how much of the Navy's data relate to the 

 EEZ. The Navy's marine data collection includes 

 bathymetry, subsurface currents, seismic profiles, 

 bottom samples, visibility, some water chemistry 

 and biology, vertical profiles of physical properties 

 (such as temperature, conductivity, and sound ve- 

 locity), acoustic character, magnetics, gravity, and 

 some side-scan sonar and bottom photography. 

 Most of the data are either classified or under con- 

 trolled distribution to the Department of Defense 

 or its contractors. 



Some data are collected, corrected, and filtered 

 before being archived at the Naval Oceanographic 

 Office; in most cases, the original/raw data are also 

 retained. Analog data are stored in their original 

 form. Most of the data are stored on magnetic tape, 

 some on floppy disks, and some on paper records. 

 Some unclassified oceanographic data are forwarded 

 to NODC , principally through the Master Oceano- 

 graphic Observation Data Sets, and some unclas- 

 sified geological/geophysical data, including unclas- 

 sified bathymetric data, sediment thicknesses, and 

 magnetics are forwarded to NGDC. The Navy is 

 a significant user of unclassified data obtained prin- 

 cipally from NODC and from academic labora- 

 tories working under Office of Naval Research con- 

 tracts. Future use of data is expected to remain at 

 about the present level with no particular focus on 

 the EEZ. 



Currendy, die U.S. Geological Survey's GLORIA 

 data are not subject to classification. NOAA multi- 

 beam depth data, however, are sufficiendy detailed 

 that they are now classified as confidential by agree- 

 ment of the National Security Council, and the 

 Navy has recommended that this classification be 

 upgraded to secret. Although the NOS is continu- 

 ing to collect multi-beam data, the NOS data are 

 being treated as classified (see next section). No Sea 

 Beam data are currendy being forwarded to NGDC 

 from any source, and thus no such data are released 

 in response to requests from foreign countries. 



The Navy's Office of Naval Research supports 

 a set of unclassified basic research contracts (mainly 

 with academic institutions) that obtain data in the 

 EEZ. Some of these are: Coastal Dynamics (to im- 

 prove prediction of coastal ocean environmental 



