Current Status of Accomplishment or Milestone: Completed (and still in progress)
Background: PFEL has a history of producing environmental data products tailored to living marine resource applications and providing them to cooperating scientists in NOAA and other federal agencies, state agencies, and internationally. In recent years, modernization and migration of computer programs to the IT-95 environment has allowed increasing the electronic distribution of data products, evolving from hard copy to diskette to email to internet distribution.
Purpose of Activity/Goal of Project: Improved utility of data products and publications and improved efficiency in production and distribution of the PFEG product data suite.
Description of Accomplishment and Significant Results: PFEL periodically produces and distributes quantitative air and ocean flow indices for selected areas along the North American west coast. PFEL has developed electronic distribution of these data through the internet via a dedicated World Wide Web site. This World Wide Web data distribution site was developed to facilitate access to both PFEL's regular clients and to other interested parties who have a WWW browsing application. An online registration was setup to allow new users the ability to immediately acquire the data products from the WWW site. The WWW data distribution site has also provided a useful and accessible place to describe PFEL's data products for regular and potential users. PFEL has seen a significant increase in the dissemination of its' data products since the WWW site was implemented. The WWW data distribution site has also facilitated an increase in the types of users who are acquiring PFEL's data.
More recent experiments have also been conducted with electronic publishing of PFEL's technical memoranda. After publication approval and concurrently with publication of the hard copy, three technical memoranda to date have been placed on the internet for downloading and printing at remote sites. Experience has shown that this increases the dissemination of PFEL's publications, including to foreign locations. Based on this experience, it may be possible to reduce the numbers of hard copies of technical memoranda produced.
Significance of Accomplishment (e.g., to the Center, to Management, and to NMFS Strategic plan Goals): Improved electronic distribution of NOAA's data products is a general goal in NOAA. Specific significance at PFEL involves the ability to expand the data products suite through partial automation without added personnel resource requirements.
Problems: None.
Key Contact: Ken Baltz (831-648-9038), George Boehlert
(831-648-8515),
Roy Mendelssohn (831-648-9029)