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Marine Data Literacy

Proudly published in the United States of America for environmental scientists around the world.  Providing instruction for managing, converting, analyzing and displaying oceanographic station data, marine meteorological data, GIS-compatible marine and coastal data and model simulations, and mapped remote sensing imagery

 

 

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Home > Courses/Training > Optics Datasets

MDL COURSE 302: Managing & Displaying Ocean Optics Datasets

Version: 2-11-2015

THIS COURSE is not a theoretical presentation of the background for marine optics.  It is a practical demonstration, through detailed practical exercises, of how you can find, download, manage and visualize various optics-related data products. 
  • No scientific manipulation of the data is included, only basic management and visualization of the files.  Many of the products are "operational", in that they are very recently obtained and transmitted directly to you through global systems. 
  • Other products are more "climatological" in nature, derived from post-facto analyses of long time-series of mapped analyses, and obtained from archive-type locations.  This completely practical course is designed to be paired with formal instruction in the theories of ocean optics.

Requires a minimum of a T-1 Internet connection at all times, due to heavy download activity and/or direct online connections to some servers.  Use of local surrogates (i.e. a USB stick or local networking) probably won't be satisfactory.
1.  Pre-Course Reading (in preparation)
2.  Integration of Marine Data Resources - Click on the chart to open a more readable version

Marine data management, quite simply, is a balancing act between the 3 major concepts:  Formats, Software and Data.  You need to become familiar with major resources in all categories, and how they work together.  In years gone past, scientists had to slog through numerous format conversions (including writing necessary code) to make connections.  But in recent years a small family of flexible formats, powerful computer programs and flexible online data sources have brought everything together.

 

This chart seems terribly complicated at first, but it will be explained during the course.  Fortunately, you will be working within a relatively restricted part of the whole schema.

  • Software
    • Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) - right side
    • Google Earth - right side
    • Ocean Data View - left side
    • Panoply - not shown
  • Data Sources
    • Operational Marine Resources - upper right
  • Formats - As indicated
3.  Preparation for the Exercises
You will become hopelessly lost within the short span of this course (1 or 2 weeks) and even in your own personal data collections, unless you adopt good data management practices.  We strongly recommend the constant use of these elements:
  • Folder Structure - Basic list of topics developed over 20 years of DM training.  Author has 10 BG and ~4000 files just for Liberia training
  • "Long" File Names
    • parameter_
    • date/time_
    • depth/height_
    • location_
    • originator_
    • provider_
    • extras_
  • Filename Content:  No Spaces, No Hyphens, No Caps (except sometimes T) - Include 3-letter format code in filename, if zipped.

 
4.  Operational Visual Images
5.  Operational Primary Production, Optical Properties and Pigment Products
6.  Data Archives & Climatologies
7.  Data Management & Manipulation
The exercises, notes and graphics in this website are copyrighted, and may not be copied or abstracted in any way, without my explicit permission (in writing).  Making one copy for your personal use is allowed.   Please report any copyright infringement to me. Murray Brown m.brown.nsb <at> gmail.com