Principal Investigator (PI): Charles Meertens, UNAVCO

The large volumes of data and derivative products produced by the forthcoming NASA Deformation, Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics of Ice (DESDynI) and Ice, Cloud,and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) satellite missions will stretch the limits of the data management and processing capabilities of existing Earth science data systems. Access tools for DESDynI data will need to address the diverse requirements of the scientific community who will use these data to study deformation of the solid Earth and cryosphere and vegetation structure.

They will also need to serve the application community's requirements in equally diverse areas ranging from earthquakes and glacier surges to wildfires and deforestation. For these hazards applications there is a requirement for timely, easy access to higher level, low latency, products in common data formats via simple to navigate web-interfaces.

Recent Cyberinfrastructure developments, when integrated into existing Earth science data systems, can provide a framework for distributed data access and enhanced processing capability.

To develop this capability ahead of the DESDynI and ICESat-2 missions, we propose to implement a system that enhances access to existing light detection and ranging (lidar) data sources hosted at NASA's National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC), Goddard Space Flight Center Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) Data Center, UNAVCO, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center. Satellite lidar data from ICEsat, high altitude airborne lidar data from LVIS, and low altitude airborne lidar from the UNAVCO and SDSC's extensive Earthscope catalog will be incorporated into the OpenTopography Portal.

This system provides integrated access to high-resolution lidar point data and on-demand processing capability for user-specified topographic data products. New web services will connect the NASA data archives at Goddard/LVIS and NSIDC DAAC to the OpenTopography portal and the other datasets available there. Integration of these distributed data archives via an easy to use web portal will enhance exposure of these data and significantly streamline user access.

Deployed at UNAVCO.