There are a handful of data sources registered in the HIS Central Catalog that are spatially ubiquitous across the United States and one that has full international coverage. All of these data services originate from U.S. Federal Agencies with varying levels of involvement from CUAHSI in their development and maintenance. Since the respective spatial coverages of observations for these services are so large, they are widely applicable in classroom settings, as complementary data sets for other monitoring efforts, and for model calibration.
Data Services in the United States
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Information System (NWIS) Daily Values and Unit Values
The National Water Information System provides access to water resources data throughout the United States. CUAHSI has built software that uses the USGS' web services to make the NWIS Daily Values and NWIS Unit Values available via HIS Central. The NWIS Unit Values service includes instantaneous observations while the Daily Values services includes several types of daily values, such as mean, median, and timed values.
Note: A NWIS Groundwater Levels data service is also available on HIS Central. The software for this data service was created was created by San Diego Supercomputer Center during the HIS Research Project and prior to the establishment of the CUAHSI Water Data Center program. CUAHSI plans to re-engineer this data service in the future as well in order to utilize the USGS' newer web services, which the Daily and Unit Values services now do.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) SNOTEL Data
The U.S. Department of Agriculture NRCS Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) Data include snow water equivalent, precipitation, water year to date precipitation, and daily minimum, maximum, and average air temperature throughout the Western United States and Alaska. The development and maintenance of software that utilizes the NRCS' web service to make the SNOTEL data available via HIS Central is led by Jiří Kadlec (Brigham Young University).
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global Historical Climatology Network
The Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) includes climate data from land surface stations across the globe that have been quality controlled. A subset of this data that includes up to September 2014 is maintained by Jiří Kadlec (Brigham Young University).
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) Hourly Primary Forcing Data and Hourly NOAH Data
The Land Data Assimilation Systems (LDAS) are land surface models that are forced by observations from multiple sources including satellites, precipitation gauges, and radar measurements. The North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) data services include data throughout the continental United States. To create these data services, CUAHSI provided the staff at NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center with support for creating appropriate metadata profiles and a custom method for uploading the metadata to HIS Central.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency STORET
The STORET (short for STOrage and RETrieval) Data Warehouse is used by State and Federal U.S. government agencies to store water quality, biological, and physical data. The San Diego Supercomputer Center developed software for retreiving the STORET data via HIS Central during the HIS Research Project and prior to the establishment of the CUAHSI Water Data Center program.
Note: CUAHSI staff is in the process of developing new software that will access the newer U.S. National Water Quality Portal. Eventually, this will replace the STORET data service in the HIS Central Catalog.
Data Services with Global Coverage
The Land Data Assimilation Systems (LDAS) are land surface models that are forced by observations from multiple sources including satellites, precipitation gauges, and radar measurements. The Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) data services include data throughout the the world.To create this data service, CUAHSI provided the staff at NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center with support for creating appropriate metadata profiles and a custom method for uploading the metadata to HIS Central.
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