Selected References, based on Vocabularies

For a complete set of references, see Search MMI References.

Titlesort iconDescriptionReference TypeReference Topic
ACT Sensors List

ACT has a searchable database of sensors used in coastal and ocean research and observing. The database is a living database; it is continually updated as new test results are available and as more information is provided on each sensor/instrument.

Argo Instrument List

(See Table 8, Page 50 on PDF document download below.)

Argo instrument list contains 3-character number codes from 831-858 (14 instruments). From document: "The objective of Argo program is to operate and manage a set of 3000 floats distributed in all oceans, with the vision that the network will be a permanent and operational system."

Argo Parameters and quality control code lists

(See Tables 2 and 3, page 46 on PDF document download below.)

Quality control codes are numbers 0-9 with meaning, real-time comments, and delayed comments. Parameter codes are 4-letters for temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pressure, salinity.

Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG): Vocabularies and Ontologies

Description

Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) is an international not-for-profit group that develops standards and protocols for sharing biodiversity data. They have a detailed collection of vocabularies and ontologies for studies of biological organisms.

Type

Vocabulary/Ontology

BODC (British Oceanographic Data Centre) Units

The British Oceanographic Data Centre has been developing parameter and unit lists for an extended period, for many data holdings. They are actively managing their parameter dictionaries as they participate in or lead numerous oceanographic data management projects.

Live access to the BODC units table and many other controlled parameter lists is now available via the BODC Vocabulary Server Web Service.

BODC Instruments List

The British Oceanographic Data Centre list of instrument terms.

BOG CTD Bottle Data Field Names

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's Biological Ocean Group CTD bottle data (up cast), productivity, physical, and chemical data field names.

BOG CTD Profiling Data Field Names

List of field names used for the profiling CTD data set type at MBARI. Describes Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's Biological Ocean Group samples from the Profiling CTD (down cast), productivity and physical parameters (sensor data). One record for each meter in depth.

British Oceanographic Data Centre Parameter Discovery Vocabulary

The BODC Parameter Discovery Vocabulary may be used to either label parameters in data set discovery metadata records (e.g. ISO19115) or provide a term layer in a hierarchical discovery interface for data marked up with the BODC Data Markup Vocabulary.

British Oceanographic Data Centre Parameter Usage Vocabulary

The BODC Parameter Dictionary has been completely overhauled during 2004 and now consists of integrated parameter usage and parameter discovery vocabularies. The BODC Parameter Usage Vocabulary may be used as a tool to label a measurement with information on what it is and how it was obtained. The scope and level of detail for this information differs significantly from term to term.

BUFR Parameters

World Meteorological Organization's Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR) has numerical codes (descriptor) and acronym-style (mnemonic) names, as well as a full description for each parameter (for distributing SeaWinds data products).

CDI Sea Search Sensor and Platform Vocabularies

Sea Search was a European data management initiative (ended in 2005). It was funded to develop and operate a pan-european infrastructure for ocean and marine data management, with many corresponding goals listed on the site.

CF - Climate and Forecast Standard Names

Description:

The Climate and Forecast (CF) standard name table specifies the possible values of the standard_name attribute defined by the CF NetCDF standard. The only valid CF standard names are those which appear in the standard name table.

Standard names are maintained by a committee headed by Alison Pammet at BADC. Additions and other updates are discussed on an email list, and archives are available at the web site.

CMECS Habitat Classification System

The CMECS habitat classification system (from NatureServe and NOAA) describes North American estuaries, coasts, and oceans. The system is divided into a branched hierarchy, parent levels are Regime, Formation, Zone, Macrohabitat, Habitat, and Biozone. Each level has description and scale associated with its classification.

DAML Ontology Library

Description

From DAML web site: "The goal of the DAML effort is to develop a language and tools to facilitate the concept of the Semantic Web." The Ontology Library currently hosts over 280 ontologies.

Type

Vocabulary/Ontology

Stage of Maturity

Existing - the item is available for public use, has been released or widely adopted, and is sponsored or maintained

Notes:

Producer

DAML

Maintainer

DAML

Users

Ontology developers.

EPIC (NOAA, PMEL) Units

The EPIC program developed a key file describing all its variables using a numeric code. This code is then encoded into the netCDF file, and includes various attributes for each parameter, including that parameter's units. Thus, the second column of the EPIC key file contains all the units used in the program.

More a working example than an authoritative list of units, but useful to give an idea of the needs of operational programs.

ESA SensorML Dictionaries

Description

This constitutes a set of observing-hardware-related dictionaries, expressed as GML.

Topics include:

  • Acquisition Methods
  • Band Types
  • Instrument Applications
  • Instrument Types
  • Orbit Types
  • Platform Types
  • Polarization Types
  • Properties
  • OGC Properties
EUNIS Habitat Classification System

Each habitat type has a unique alphanumeric code and full description.

Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center - Interpolated Sea Level Pressure

Terms associated with the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, Pacific Fisheries Environmental Laboratory's monthly averages of the FNMOC (Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center) 6-hourly analyzed pressure fields interpolated where necessary to a 360 by 181 global spherical grid (1-degree), and Air/Ocean indices computed from the interpolated pressure.

GCMD Location Keywords

GCMD list of Location keywords has 6-tier hierarchy:

Category > Type > Sub-Region1 > Sub-Region2 > Sub-Region3 > Location.

An example of this for an ocean region:

Ocean > Pacific Ocean > South Pacific Ocean > Polynesia > Norfolk Island.

GCMD allows Informal user addition of keywords, see related links, below.

GCMD Science Keywords

The GCMD list of Science Keywords contains 1417 terms ordered in a 5-tier hierarchy. The list does not have codes for terms.

GCMD Sensors VocabularyThe GCMD (Global Change Master Directory) keyword vocabularies are maintained by NASA, and are fairly extensive. These keywords are used to reference data submitted to the NASA repository.
GEMET - GEneral Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus

Reference URL

GEMET thesaurus

GEMET provides a user friendly parameter discovery interface for the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET). It makes use of SKOS, the Simple Knowledge Organisation System and also the metadata registries standard, ISO 11179.

Global Change Master Directory Keywords

A hierarchical list of keywords to the variable level (groupings: science, services, projects, instruments, platforms, locations), the GCMD keywords are used in many contexts. The keywords are updated with new submissions through a fairly informal process.

ICES-SeaDataNet Platform Code

The ICES-SeaDataNet platform code contains a 2-character country code (from ICES/ISO country code) followed by a 2-character vessel code. The vessel identifier is only unique in that country. As of late 2007, there are over 6000 codes for platforms around the world.

IHO Feature Dictionary Register

Temporay page for the IHO Feature Dictionary registers. This will eventually be replaced with the home page of the IHO Registry to provide access to not only the feature dictionaries, but other registers e.g. meta, data types etc. Each feature has an alphacode identifier an other properties, like name, cameCase, definition, distinction etc..

International Scientific Units (NIST)

NIST has a very coherent description of the model used for working with science units, along with a comprehensive list of abbreviatinos.

Internet (www) Country Code Top-level Domain

The internet (www) country code top-level domain (ccTLD) corresponds to ISO 3166 with few exceptions noted on the websites listed above. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) controls the delegation of ccTLD identifiers which are two letters, such as .uk (an example of an exception for the United Kingdom, gb in ISO 3166).

IOC GF3 parameter codes

listing of parameter codes, subsetted according to CTD data, moored current meter data, etc.

IOOS Parameter Vocabulary V.1.0

Description

The Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) is a system of systems that routinely and continuously provides quality controlled data and information on current and future states of the oceans and Great Lakes from the global scale of ocean basins to local scales of coastal ecosystems. It is composed of a global and coastal components.

ISDM Code Lists

ISDM has published a set of various code lists, including activity codes, country codes, data type codes, digit codes, instrument type codes, and sampling technique codes.  See the link below for a complete list, and access to the various vocabularies. 

ISDM Dictionary of Oceanographic Codes

From web site:

"This web site contains the meanings of oceanographic codes as used by participating national and international institutes. It is intended as a reference tool to standardize the use of such codes."

ISO 3166 Country Codes

ISO 3166 uses a formal, two-letter code for coding names of countries and their subdivisions. ISO 3166-3 is the code for formerly used country names, uses 4-letter alphabetical codes (the first two of which were the original country code).

ISO Units Standards

ISO has published several standards on quantities and units, most notably ISO 31 ("Quantities and Units"), which has 14 parts, and ISO 1000, which is the ISO representation of the SI units system.

A very formal and stable standard.

See UCUM units references for a possibly useful perspective on this standard.

ISO/TC 211 Multi-Lingual Glossary of Terms

Description

From ISO/TC 211 documention:

The ISO/TC 211 Multi-Lingual Glossary of Terms has been compiled from International Standards developed by ISO/TC 211. Its purpose is to encourage consistency in the use and interpretation of geospatial terms. It is being made freely available to all interested people and organizations.

MBARI's Video Annotation Reference System

From System Overview: The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) "has developed the Video Annotation and Reference System (VARS), consisting of software and hardware to facilitate the creation, storage, and retrieval of video annotation." The video is collected from MBARI's remotely operated vehicles deployed on deep-sea dives for biologists, chemists, and geologists, along the west coast of North America.

MEDS Standard Codes

Marine Environmental Data Services standard codes describe the accuracy to which measurements have been made. ISDM is Integrated Science Data Management.

MESH: Mapping European Seabed Habitats

The MESH program goal is to develop international standards and protocols for seabed mapping studies. The end products will include a meta database of mapping studies, and guidance for marine habitat mapping including protocols and standards.

In the basic search page, there is a list of pointers to different habitat mapping vocabularies.

MODIS Units

These pages have data items for NASA's MODIS satellite, including the units in which each data item is stored. More than a comprehensive list, this is an example.

Multiple Links at OceanTeacher

This link contains references to several other sites of interest, only some of which are covered here (so far). Many of the references of interest relate to units.

(A partial list.)

Note: UNESCO's Ocean Portal also has numerous references.

NERC DataGrid Vocabulary Server

The NDG Vocabulary Server provides access to lists of standardised terms that cover a broad spectrum of disciplines of relevance to the oceanographic and wider community. This includes vocabularies for data mark-up, data categorisation, intrumentation types, named sea areas and many more. The service has a growing community of users including the SeaDataNet project (comprising members from 47 European and North African groups), the British Antarctic Survey and the NERC DataGrid project (with members from a number of UK oceanographic and atmospheric institutions).

NetCDF Dataset Discovery Attribute Convention

Standard attributes describe a NetCDF dataset to facilitate data discovery. The attributes parallel the "digital library metadata" defined in the THREDDS catalog specification.

Attributes are used to add information inside the NetCDF file, while THREDDS catalog metadata adds information external to the NetCDF file. THREDDS tools will use these attributes for extracting metadata from datasets, and exporting to Dublin Core, DIF, ADN, FGDC, ISO 19115 etc. metadata formats.

Ethan Davis at unidata requests comments and suggestions.

NGA GEOnet Names Server
The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGA) and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names' (US BGN) database of foreign geographic feature names. The database is the official repository of foreign place-name decisions approved by the US BGN. Approximately 20,000 of the database's features are updated monthly.
NGDC Marine & Geological Samples Database

January 2002 Parameters & Information. Index to Marine and Lacustrine Geological Samples database at the National Geophysical Data Center. This includes basic sample collection, storage, lithology, and age data for the sample holdings of the major US oceanographic institutions and government agencies.

NOAA CO-OP Tide and Current Glossary

Glossary of tide and current terms by the NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, January 2000.

NOAA CoRIS Thesauri

The keywords documents include mappings to GCMD concepts.

Discovery Keywords:

CoRIS Discovery Keywords (pdf, 12 kb)

Theme Keywords:

CoRIS Theme Keywords (pdf, 56 kb)

Place Keywords:

NODC Codes for Biological Observations

This National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) document, dated 93/06/04, contains codes in many different domains associated with biological observations. Codes are 1, 2, or 3 characters.

Domains include:

NODC Sensors (Type) List

The NODC instrument types list can be found by navigating to http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/search/prod/insttypes.pl and doing a search (with nothing entered).

A reference copy of the data has been attached in case this resource becomes unavailable. 

NODC World Ocean Database Country Codes

National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) World Ocean Database 2005 contains country codes that are numbers to 99 followed by 2-letter codes. WOD omits many countries that are landlocked. Informal.

NODC World Ocean Database Institute Code

The NODC World Ocean Database assigns unique numerical identifiers to each institute, ranging from 4-1226. There are over 600 institutions in the list.

Sea Surface Temperature Variables

 

Variables available:

  1. Raw 1 degree SST Monthly Mean
  2. Trimmed 1-degree SST Monthly Mean
  3. Raw Number of SST Observations
  4. Trimmed Number of SST Observations
  5. Climatological mean SST
  6. Climatological mean SST St Dev
  7. Monthly SST anomaly
  8. No. of Obs. Trimmed based on climatology
  9. No. of Obs. Trimmed based on Observations
SEACOOS Data Dictionary v2.0

The SEACOOS Data Dictionary v2.0 is an extention of the Climate and Forecast (CF) Standard Names Table (v1).  This dictionary includes standard names that are coordinate-related, time_date names, atmospheric data, physical oceanographic, chemical oceanographic, electromagnetic radiation, ADCP, sensor-related, platform-related, and navigation not available or modified from CF Standard Names Table (v1) at the time of the project.

SIO/GDC Vocabulary Terms

Controlled Vocabulary utilized in SIOExplorer, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Geological Data Center (SIO/GDC). Includes listing of terms for various parameters in the GDC scheme.

SSDS Sensor Types

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has been developing a sophisticated data system for many of its research platforms for some time. The data system has always described its data sources and platforms fairly thoroughly, and used a device type categorization to group the devices.

Standardized Region Names

Part of the Climate and Forecast standard specification, which is designed mainly for use with NetCDF, this list was based on the NASA GCMD keyword list for locations on 12 December 2002.

The CF version has several differences, including that it is a flat vocabulary where the GCMD is an hierarchy.

TAMU Glossary of Physical Oceanography and Related Terms

Alphabetical glossary of terms with definitions.

Relatively static glossary. Uncertain about its use in applications.

Teledyne RD Instruments Glossary of Terminology

Teledyne RDI maintains a detailed list of marine and ADCP-related terms and definitions on their website for customer reference.

U.S. Globec Instrument Names

U.S. Globec Program maintains a Data Thesaurus. The Instrument Names have acronym-style codes or words assigned to each instrument. The list was based on preliminary guidelines from the JGOFS program.

U.S. Globec Thesaurus

List contains code name (a combination of truncated words or a full word), full description of field name, and units for measurement. This is a comprehensive list of field names from biological and physical parameters.

U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study Parameters

List of parameter names, descriptions, and units according to the following categories: Sampling attributes, Physical properties, Chemistries, Trace elements, Organic compounds, Biology - Organism abundance/biomass, Biology - Production/uptake/respiration, Isotopes, Optics

Unidata UDUNITS Units

UDUNITS is a Unidata library that supports conversion of unit specifications between formatted and binary forms, arithmetic manipulation of unit specifications, and conversion of values between compatible scales of measurement. A list of standard names for units and their representations is part of the library.

UDUNITS is widely used in environmental science software packages, and UDUNITS terms have been widely adopted.

Unified Codes for Units of Measure (UCUM)

This standard is becoming recommended practice for various organizations, for example some of the OGC standards.

The links provide the following:

Units by Petroleum Open Standards Consortium (POSC)

This is a comprehensive approach to defining units of measure for computation, sponsored by the Petroleum Open Standards Consortium. References on the site describe the problem to be solved, the approach taken, and provide the standard and a standard list of units.

Appears to be used in multiple applications.

Perceptive on certain issues that other standards may not be aware of.

WMO Codes for Temperature Sensors

The code tables in this document contain a very comprehensive list of temperature sensor types.