Because good research needs good data

Marine Biology

Use Cases

BODC - British Oceanographic Data Centre Published Data Library

This national facility for looking after and distributing data concerning the marine environment requires that data sets use a well-documented format such as CF-compliant NetCDF and be accompanied by a Dublin Core record as well as discovery metadata in a recognised standard such as DIF or FGDC/CDGM.

Integrated Marine Observing System Portal
This portal is the primary access point for search, discovery, access and download of data collected by the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), an Australian Government Research Infrastructure project. Uses the Marine Community Profile extension of ISO 19115
NCDC - National Climatic Data Center

The world's largest climate data archive, providing climatological services and data worldwide. It currently promotes the FGDC/CSDGM metadata standard for its datasets.

Metadata standards

DIF - Directory Interchange Format

An early metadata initiative from the Earth sciences community, intended for the description of scientific data sets. It inlcudes elements focusing on instruments that capture data, temporal and spatial characteristics of the data, and projects with which the dataset is associated.

FGDC/CSDGM - Federal Geographic Data Committee Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata

BGDC policy states that non-Federally authored standards that are endorsed by the FGDC have the same status as FGDC developed standards. Since ISO 19115 and the associated standards are endorsed by the FGDC, federal agencies are encouraged to transition to ISO metadata as their agencies are able to do so.