Standards promote interoperability of USGS data on the Geoscience Information Network

As a Federal organization conducting scientific investigations since 1879, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) continues to develop a vast array of data assets. USGS’s mission of providing science for a changing world requires improved characterization and understanding of Earth’s natural processes through synthesis and integration of multi-disciplinary and disparate data. Developed by the USGS, the ScienceBase data management infrastructure provides systems and databases to enable cataloging, sharing, preserving, and analysis functions on metadata and data. Using open source components, multiple metadata and data standards, and common data-processing protocols, ScienceBase flexibly interacts with data providers and consumers using diverse methods to access and deliver data and information.

The USGS Core Research Center (CRC) catalogs and provides public access to one of the largest rock core repositories in the world. The system stores core metadata in a PostgreSQL database, and ArcGIS Server drives an online viewer to enable spatial exploration of cores and cuttings. ScienceBase leverages standards and content models from the U.S. Geoscience Information Network (USGIN) to enable interoperability with similar systems and collections. These include 1) International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 19115 standard metadata describing CRC collections using Open Geospatial Consortium’s (OGC) Catalog Service for the Web query methods and 2) data compliant with USGIN content models describing physical samples delivered via OGC Web Feature Service. By using standard metadata to describe collections, agreed-upon content models to structure data characterizing unique physical samples, and open data delivery standards, ScienceBase is able to serve as a USGIN information node for federated searches, promoting broader discovery and use of geophysical samples and data collected by the USGS.