Data Plan and Facilities

UNH EOS Explorer: As discussed in Task III.3.1 of the Technical Plan, we have developed a working prototype which will provide full GIS capability over the internet and which will be fully interoperable with NASA's EOS Data and Information System Core System (ECS). A primary objective of this working prototype is to provide to anyone connected with LBA the ability to conduct geospatial searches and queries via the internet. We shall also cooperate fully and support the "community GIS." Our system will be hyper-linked to the LBA Home Page. We call our initial prototype the UNH EOS Explorer.

As also discussed, we shall place all of our models within the Web-based GIS with a model linkage and evaluation framework. This framework will serve to couple models such as our proposed Land Evaluation Model, the Landuse Model, the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model including WBM/WTM and trace gas components, and the remote sensing data and error analysis analytical tools, which are presented in Task III. 3.2-4. This linkage will take place in a GIS context to facilitate the scaling analysis, data and model evaluation, as well as a framework available to the community for planning field investigations.

Our plan is to place all model parameters, all supporting data (e.g., see Table 1 in the Technical Plan), representative model output from various scenarios, and all publications as preprints and reprints on line in the Web- based GIS and evaluation framework. We shall also place any data that LBA investigators wish to include on line in the framework.

We have demonstrated this GIS system to Larry Voorhis, (Manager of the ORNL DAAC), and we are currently investigating cooperative arrangements for supporting LBA data and information needs. The URL is http://www.unh-ecs.sr.unh.edu/, and we invite anyone to test the current system and give us feedback. We have a mechanism to collect data about usage, and we know that there is still much to be done before the system could be termed "operational." Some of the shortcomings were mentioned in the discussion under Task III.3.1.

Schedule:

• Data layers for LBA are available now in the UNH EOS Explorer (Table 1 in the Technical Plan).
• If selected, within one month we will poll other selected teams and see if we can mount additional LBA- relevant data in the UNH EOS Explorer. Because the UNH EOS Explorer is both Web and ECS interoperable, this will facilitate the development of the "Community GIS."
• Existing base model runs will be in the UNH EOS Explorer at funding; results of new structures will be made available as soon as a pre-print is in development and we are certain that they are without internal error.

Computing Facilities:

The Complex Systems Research Center's (CSRC) common computing facilities which will support the LBA effort are composed of a wide range of servers, printing and plotting devices and archiving systems which are integrated using several internal networks. Overall support is provided by the Research Computing Center which is located within the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS). We take advantage in this proposal of our existing computer infrastructure, which is wholly adequate for our anticpated computational needs. There is no funding request for computing hardware or software in this proposal.

The main CSRC servers consist of high-end, multi- processor parallel computing systems manufactured by Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems. These high performance systems currently have 157 GBs of disk space on-line which are accessible from any user workstation through a transparent Network File System (NFS) configuration. Final data and image products can be produced from anyone of many ink-jet or electrostatic plotters and laser printers. Additionally, there are several CD-ROM writers for data distribution. Data archives and backups are performed using a hierarchical management system which includes magnetic disk drives, a magneto optical juke boxes (currently two each with 270 GBs capacity), a Digital Linear Tape (DLT) robotics library unit, an 8mm robotics tape library unit and several individual 8mm tape devices.

Individual scientists and groups have additional computing resources which include dedicated servers, individual workstations, and various peripheral devices. The group servers and individual workstations include: Dec Alphas, SGI workstations, Sun workstations, X terminals, PCs, Apple MacIntoshes and laptop computers. All servers, user platforms and peripheral devices are accessible within the EOS Institute through either a 10/100 Mb ethernet network, a 100 Mb FDDI ring network or both. The systems also have access to the internet through these networks.

As mentioned, all systems, devices, and networks are administered by a team of professional system administrators and technicians within the Research Computing Center. They provide software and technical support for the Institute as well as handle maintenance and service contracts.