July 2002

New metrics pages going on-line

GLCF has been working to integrate and update the Federation Evaluation web pages. New quarterly metrics and GPRA monthly forms, viewers, and status reports have been constructed. A customer satisfaction questionnaire is being developed and will be made available on these new web pages. The nuggets entry form and viewer has been improved. For instance, the nugget viewer now allows a user to query based on nugget category, date entered, and ESIP. This is a huge improvement of the previous viewer which only allowed query by category. This site will be a one-stop shop for entering and viewing metrics related data.

John Townshend's field work in Paraguay

John Townshend and senior NASA scientist Jim Tucker embarked on a one week field survey of deforestation activity in Paraguay. Land cover change research conducted by the Deforestation Mapping Group (DMG), a science initiative hosted by the GLCF, has revealed large areas in Paraguay where extensive agriculture is driving the mass conversion of forested area to fields. Townshend and Tucker are validating several key areas identified using Landsat TM and ETM imagery. While in country they will have the opportunity to perform several aerial flyovers of recently cleared areas, and intend on meeting with Paraguayan local experts and other government officials. The results of this campaign will significantly enhance our understanding of the deforestation process and how well our current science data products have captured this change.

Data Migration Nears Completion

As of August 22, 2002, we have migrated close to 5TB of our data holdings to our new system. This includes 1.02TB of data stored on disk RAIDs and 3.90TB of data archived onto our tape system using the Tivoli Storage Manager. Once complete, this transition will allow our users instant access to our most popular data holdings while allowing us to stage archived data upon customer request. The migration is scheduled to be completed no later than October 31, 2002.