SUPPORTING INTEGRATED DROUGHT SCIENCE WITH U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY TOOLS, APPLICATIONS, AND COMMUNITIES

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) generates data and information products critical for integrated drought research. These include data and models covering the diverse topics of landcover, groundwater, surface-water, snowpack, vegetation, soil moisture, stream temperature, invasive species, and biogeochemical processes. Like most research organizations, USGS is encountering new challenges as scientists contend with the scale of these data products when transferring, storing, analyzing, and referencing them to meet research goals and to enable reproducible scientific workflows. To support these needs, USGS has been modernizing internal data systems, integrating new technical architecture, and building communities of practice to support contemporary research requirements.

ScienceBase (www.sciencebase.gov), a USGS data repository, now uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage to support large files. For two common file formats, Cloud Optimized GeoTiff (COG) and formatted NetCDF, cloud storage can also support direct access for viewing, analysis, and sub-setting purposes. ScienceBase has also recently integrated with the Globus platform (https://www.globus.org/) to help scientists move and retrieve large datasets. These advances to data publishing efforts support persistent citation, research access needs, and directives to modernize Federal IT infrastructure. Paired with code-based analysis and modeling, a catalog that links related model code, data, and traditional text-based manuscripts (https://data.usgs.gov/modelcatalog), and a USGS-wide community of practice for sharing advances in integrated data and science (https://usgs.gov/cdi), the USGS is working to improve how the organization delivers information and decision-making tools to stakeholders. These tools and resources are publicly available to support collaboration with non-USGS partners.