Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN) Data Directory

Project Background
Numerous initiatives throughout the Great Lakes basin are calling for greater coordination of GIS data collection and dissemination efforts to better establish the status and trends of Great Lakes coastal natural resources. Many of these initiatives recognize the need for a shared resource of GIS data. The most recent draft of the United States Policy Committee’s Great Lakes Strategy 2001 prioritizes habitat protection, coastal wetlands, water resources, sustainable land use, conservation practices on agricultural lands (specific to buffers), Great Lakes fisheries, among others, and goes even further and calls for data trends to be accessible via the Internet by 2006. By 2003, the Committee seeks the development of a binational coastal online GIS database.

The project will collect standardized descriptions for approximately 2,000 coastal spatial data sets from local, regional, state/provincial, and federal sources, including several current basinwide projects looking at coastal wetlands, water resources, lake levels and ecosystem health studies such as beach monitoring and human health issues.

The data directory will be built into the Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN), so that it reaches the widest possible audience. The interface will feature a search function for locating data be topic and a map interface for location data geography.

Two secondary objectives of the GLIN Data Directory project are (1) to encourage the use of standardized metadata and (2) to provide uniform base data for the Great Lakes basin, compliants with federal standards easy to access. The directory will encourage agencies towards metadata creation and compliance as part of meeting their missions and data dissemination goals.

With coastal areas under pressures from many angles, tools for resource managers and policy makers are critical for ecological conservation and the development of sustainable practices. The GLIN Data Directory answers the need for a central data depot with data descriptions, hyperlinks to data, publishing contacts and all relevant information on each data set the directory indexes.

Data and Information Description
The GLC will assimilate into the GLIN Data Directory approximately 2,000 coastal spatial data sets from the local, regional, state/provincial, and federal level within the categories of:

• political/administrative boundaries
  
• demographics


• transportation


• utilities and infrastructure


• agriculture and landuse/land cover


• surface hydrology and hypsography/bathymetry


• soils, geology, and groundwater


• digital raster graphics/line graphics, satellite imagery, and digital orthophotography