Data Lifecycle Management for Field Campaigns: Welcome to the Earth Observing Laboratory Field Catalog and Archive

The NSF NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) has supported over 600 national and international field campaigns which represent half a century of field-based observational science. Our mission is to provide responsive, high quality data services to researchers in field campaigns including pre-field phase planning, real-time decision-making tools, and long-term data curation to support the complete project life cycle. Such support includes (1) serving as the online hub for field campaign operations with access to real-time mission coordination displays and communication tools, (2) ensuring a secure, easily accessible archive of campaign observations, and (3) providing long-term stewardship and curation of observational datasets. All datasets in the EOL’s Field Data Archive are publicly accessible and findable at https://data.eol.ucar.edu/.  

 

EOL data management services are continuously evolving as we pursue FAIR and TRUSTed principles based on industry standards, user feedback and the desire to increase data discovery and accessibility to the broader scientific community. The management of our field campaign data is an iterative, human-driven and agile process. Thus, to address challenges arising from data preparation, preservation, and provenance metadata as the volume and variety of our data grows, EOL has developed tools and workflows that track and maintain the collection of data. In this presentation we will introduce highlights and functionalities of the Field Catalog and the Field Data Archive that together provide end-to-end customized data management services for field campaigns.