Management at NSIDC: Ruth Duerr

Project Lead, MODIS

Manager, Data Stewardship

B.S., Summa Cum Laude, University of North Dakota, 1977
M.S., University of Arizona, 1980
Graduate Certificate in Science and Technology Policy, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2007

Specialties [top]

Science data management, digital archives management, records management, and digital library science; software and system engineering.

Recent Highlights top]

National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, CO, 2002-present
Alaska Satellite Facility, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 1992-2002

Current Roles [top]

Duerr is currently is the manager of NSIDC’s data stewardship program, and data scientist for the MODIS and PARCA programs.

Her research interests involve nearly all aspects of data stewardship. Her recent activities include a NASA-sponsored activity that demonstrated the feasibility of using the PREMIS metadata standard with NSIDC data holdings at the data set level; testing mechanisms for improving the long-term recoverability of data in NASA’s archive that are in outdated data formats; and a NOAA-sponsored project, working with the science community to introduce production of detailed metadata into the product development process.

Duerr is also working with NASA’s Technology Infusion working group to identify data stewardship-related technology and standards gaps, to assess the readiness levels of existing standards and technologies, and to recommend data stewardship-related technologies for adoption.

Current Projects[top]

PI, Community-Enabled Discovery, Access, Publishing, and Enhancement (CEDDAPE): Enabling an Information Commons

This project, funded by NSF, will develop a working prototype of a federated and community-enabled approach to data sharing, discovery, and enhancement. The primary goal is to help lower barriers to data publishing, annotation, and enhancement while maintaining the authority and heritage information provided by formal archives.

Co-I, Creation And Preservation Of A Sea Ice Climate Data Record

This project, funded by the NOAA Scientific Data Stewardship Program, will help NSIDC add higher-resolution AMSR data to the existing SMMR and SSM/I passive microwave instrument-based sea ice concentration record, and will improve the metadata attached to the record. NSIDC bases most of our sea ice tracking on the passive microwave sea ice concentration record.

Co-I, Cryospheric Change Analysis Web Services Project

The Cryospheric Change Analysis Web Services (CCAWS) project is funded by NASA to develop a scalable cryospheric analysis portal for the study of Greenland's ice mass balance. This portal will include interactive data analysis tools, seamless data access, and interoperable information services. To make this possible, a set of existing subsetting, gridding, projection, and visualization tools at NSIDC will be made into modular Web services. Also, as part of this project, NSIDC will bring in several new data sets.

PI for the University of Colorado component of the Data Conservancy

The Data Conservancy is funded by NSF and sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University. This collaborative project will build an infrastructure to manage digital information and enable ease of access within and across disciplines. Sayeed Choudhury, associate dean of Johns Hopkins University libraries, is the overall project PI.

PI, Discovery and Access to Historic Literature from the IPYs (DAHLI)

DAHLI, partly funded through NOAA's Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) is developing an online bibliography of records and publications from past International Polar Year (IPY) events: 1882-1883, 1932-1933, and 1957-1958. Materials may include scientific research, scientific observations and data, sociological data, and historical data. DAHLI will stimulate the discovery and preservation of these rare and uncatalogued items, estimated to be several thousand documents, in archives around the world. Current activities include digitization of materials related to the first and second IPYs, held at the Carnegie Institute.

Co-PI, Improving Long-term Preservation of EOS Data by Independently Mapping HDF Data Objects

The NASA Earth Observing System has more than a petabyte of critical earth science data stored in the HDF4 format. The normal way to access HDF-formatted data is through the HDF software libraries, either by using the HDF Application Programming Interface (API) directly or by using HDF tools that depend on the HDF libraries. However there is a risk in depending solely on the HDF libraries to access HDF-formatted data over the long term. It is possible, especially in the distant future, that the libraries may not be as readily available as they are today. To address this risk, it is desirable to have a way to retrieve the data independently.

The goal of this project is to make HDF4 data accessible through markup-language-based tools, and to begin the process of deploying these capabilities at NASA data centers. The team will also investigate how this approach can be applied to the body of EOS data that is archived in HDF5 format in order to facilitate long-term access independently from using the HDF library and tools.

Co-PI for the CU component of the Product Development Team for Snow and Ice Climate Data Records

This is a multi-institutional project funded by the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). Collaborating institutions include the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), the University of Wisconsin, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the University of Colorado (CU), and the National Snow and Ice Data Center housed within the CU/NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

The Cryosphere Product Development Team formed under this project will coordinate the generation, validation, and archiving of fundamental and thematic snow and ice climate data records. Our goal is to refine, extend, validate, document, and archive visible, infrared, and passive microwave cryosphere products. We will build on existing efforts, interacting with other funded products, as appropriate. We will coordinate existing and new products and will update heritage products to allow NOAA to continue with their production and dissemination into the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preperatory Project and NPOESS era. We will establish “best practices” within the Team and for the broader cryosphere community, evaluating gridding options, consistency within and between similar products, and metada

Recent Projects[top]

Co-I, Investigation and Tool Development for Storing NASA ECS Data Using HDF5 Archival Information Package (AIP)

This project, funded by the NOAA Scientific Data Stewardship Program, will demonstrate one solution to the challenges of both archiving and distributing remote sensing data, namely migration of data to a single standards-based archive format. Data from NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Data Centers formatted in Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) will be used in the demonstration.

Publications[top]

Yang, MuQun, Ruth Duerr, and Choonghwan Lee. 2009. Investigation of Using HDF5 Archival Information Packages (AIP) to store NASA ECS data. Presented at the 89th AMS Annual Meeting, January 2009, Phoenix, Arizona.

Duerr, R., P. Cao, J. Crider, M. Folk, C. Lynnes, and M. Yang. 2009. Ensuring long term access to remotely-sensed data with layout maps. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 47:1, 123-129.

Duerr, R., M. Yang, and C. Lee. In press. Towards a standard archival format for Earth science data: Storing NASA ECS data using HDF5 Archival Information Packages (AIP). Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

Weaver, R.S., W. M. Meier, and R. M. Duerr. In press. Maintaining data records: Practical decisions required For data set prioritization, preservation, and access. Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

Duerr, R., R. Weaver, and M. A. Parsons. 2006. A new approach to preservation metadata for scientific data: A real world example. Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium and 27th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing.

Duerr, R., M. Parsons, M. Marquis, R. Dichtl, and T. Mullins. 2004. Challenges in long-term data stewardship. Proc. 21st IEEE Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies. NASA/CP-2004-212750: 47-67.

Parsons, M.A., R. L. Weaver, R. Duerr, and R. G. Barry. 2004. Data management considerations for the International Polar Year. EOA Trans. Supplement 85 (47) F442, C23B-0.

Parsons, M.A. and R. Duerr. 2005. Designating user communities for scientific data: challenges and solutions. Data Science Journal 4:31-38.

Duerr, R. and E. Hansen. 1992. Shaping data systems through the EOS era: The UARS experience. In Earth and Space Science Information Systems. AIP Conference Proceedings, Ed. Arthur Zygielbaum, 283: 80-88. New York: AIP.