A Plan to Standardize and Enrich OBIS Discovery Metadata

The Global Change Master Directory is assisting the Ocean Biogeographic Information System with improving discovery metadata being served to the science community. The basic plan is to integrate the discovery metadata from various sources that has been aggregated onto the Global Change Master Directory database with the marine species coverage metadata derived from data that has been aggregated onto the Ocean Biogeographic Information System Portal cache. We give a discussion of benefits and risks, an implementation plan showing progress to date and a work flow plan for program staff once development is complete. Data and communication flow charts and detailed specifications are also included. Introduction: Standardized information about data (metadata) is vital to effective discovery, use and understanding of scientific data. The Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) provides comprehensive discovery metadata for data collections relevant to global change research and is partnered with many international data collection groups such as the Join