The Antarctic Glaciological Data Center: Continued Data Collection, Archiving, and Distribution of Results of NSF-OPP Funded Research in Antarctic Glaciology

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Scambos/0944763This award supports the continuation of the Antarctic Glaciological Data Center (AGDC), an NSF-supported data activity for the past 10 years. The project will continue to gather, document, post, and distribute Antarctic data for NSF OPP's Antarctic Glaciology Program and related NSF programs that wish to locate data there. The primary focus is archiving NSF-OPP Antarctic Glaciology program Principal Investigator(PI) field, laboratory, and computer model data ("PI data sets") generated by funded research. AGDC has benefited from its location at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, because of its ability to easily incorporate related, important NASA-sponsored compiled products and other data sets derived from other efforts at the Center. The Center offers access to an extensive expertise in data management and web distribution as well. The current PI data set archives are available by direct data download from an ftp site. Data discovery, browse and distribution for AGDC data sets are supported by a recently developed web tool that provides MapServer-based geospatial browse, ordering, and data delivery. This site, the Antarctic Cryosphere Access Portal (A-CAP), permits rapid scanning of available data for a region of interest, and the ability to overlay multiple data sets over various continent-wide maps, images, and geophysical products. The intellectual merit of the AGDC is that it directly supports Antarctic ice and climate research by facilitating data access and archiving older data, important for change detection and project planning. The site's archives have been a contributor to many published research papers. The broader impacts of the project are that it will be part of the ongoing discipline-wide trend to a more web-based approach to earth science research and data access in general, in collaboration with partner data centers AGIC (Antarctic Geospatial Information Center) and MDIC (Marine Data and Information Center). Furthermore, by making "real data" on the cryosphere accessible to the public, it fosters interest and understanding in the Polar Regions and the changes going on there.