Regional and global biogeochemical dynamics data can now be located and acquired through a metadata search system at the ORNL DAAC.
Climate, hydroclimatology, soil, and vegetation data held by data centers around the world are available through a Web-based system called "Mercury." Mercury allows users to search metadata files to identify data sets of interest, and it directs the users to the data.
The data sets indexed in Mercury were chosen by the ORNL DAAC's User Working Group as important to the global change research community for understanding the function of terrestrial ecosystems and for examining patterns across temporal and spatial scales.
The following types of regional and global data are currently indexed in Mercury:
- Land Cover / Vegetation (11 data sets),
- Hydrology (7 data sets),
- Soil (9 data sets),
- Climate (6 data sets), and
- Miscellaneous (6 data sets from historical flux towers and networks of sites).
Data may be found through Mercury by searching on attributes (e.g., site, investigator, parameter, data set title), by searching entire documents, or by searching on keywords. Additional metadata and documentation are provided for each data set. The metadata include links to the data and metadata stored elsewhere.
To access regional and global data through Mercury, visit the Mercury Search System.
The ORNL DAAC also archives and distributes other regional and global data through its main Web site.