USDA-ARS Data Sets for Water Quality, Biofuels, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Demand is increasing for agronomic and natural resources data by researchers, policy makers, tactical and strategic decision makers.  The complexity and cost of data collection, a growing recognition of the value of data standards across space and time, emphasis on the development and use of simulation models, growing demand for temporal change analysis, and interdisciplinary collaborative investigations have raised the awareness of, and need for long-term data stewardship and data sharing.  The USDA-ARS is addressing this challenge by developing coordinated data management strategies at project, national program and agency levels.   These efforts are using information-technology principles to build a master Data Management System that will incorporate successful, existing ARS systems such as STEWARDS, GRACENet and REAP.  Internal and external stakeholders to ARS are being consulted for system requirements, and consultation from other organizations is being sought to take advantage of lessons learned from successful data management systems built by others.   Assimilation of research data into program-wide databases using sound data management technologies is expected to enhance research opportunities by ARS and foster collaboration within the broader scientific community. The unique field-data collection techniques and analytical laboratory methods associated with ARS research data requires a database structure capable of managing detailed measurement, spatial, and metadata on an individual data-set basis.  We expect individual scientists, laboratories, the agency, the scientific community, and land managers and policy-makers to benefit from the development and maintenance of the system.