- Geology, Cartography, Geography, Hydrology, Biology, etc.

• Biologic Information
• Geographic Information
• Hydrologic Information
• Geologic Information

• Organization -- Science Center, District Office, Science Team, Mapping Center, Field Office
• Discipline -- Biologic, Geographic, Geologic, Hydrologic
• Theme -- Hazards, Resources, Environment
• Geography -- Place, Ecoregion, Physiography, Stream/Watershed, Latitude/ Longitude, Congressional District
• Time -- Date, Epic, Time Series

• Gateway to the Earth encompasses all of the ways that users find, get, and use natural science information
• Initial focus on USGS Web sites and Web-based services

Gateway to the Earth Project Elements

• Customer needs and expectations
• Standardized lexicon and metadata tagging
• Information architecture and graphical design
• Robust search capability
• Advanced geospatial search
• Information infrastructure support

• Ensure utility for target audiences
• Identify primary and secondary customers and their information and support needs
• Analysis based on extensive customer interaction including focus groups

• Support meaningful, consistent content description (metadata) and labeling
• Permit more accurate search results
• Assemble a broad high-level USGS thesaurus with links to deeper thesauri as needed
• Tag all appropriate content with controlled metadata

• Provide a high-level framework for consolidating and presenting our Web-based knowledge assets in a way that is:

- Understandable
- Logically structured
- Appropriately integrated
- Consistently labeled
- Easy to navigate and use

• More effective thematic browse interface

• Logical physical or virtual grouping of like information promotes less redundancy, more efficient navigation, and more meaningful cross-linkages

• Analyze current Web architecture

- Identify principal knowledge assets and linkages - Identify potential improvements

• Define Gateway information architecture

- High level organization of information assets
- Principal topics and pathways for thematic browse

• Browse trees reflect rather than dictate information architecture

• Create visual metaphors to provide context and organization of content tailored for:

- Audience (scientist, planner, student, etc.)
- Learning styles (non-linear, visual, etc.)
- Purpose (informational, visualization, decision support, e-commerce, etc.)

• Labeling system closely linked to thesaurus
• Tight integration of browse trees with automated, directed search tools

• One interface for querying all USGS information sources
• Improved information discovery

- High probability of finding important, relevant resources
- Aggregated, meaningful results
- Ability to integrate related USGS information:

• Ultraseek search engine

- Adjusted rankings for major themes
- Standard keywords from thesaurus
- Geographic search capabilities

• Data Bases Search Engine (DBSE)

- Focus initially on major USGS data bases
- Search to granularity of each data base

Standard USGS Search Result – Today

Found 1235 results – pages or documents

Pretty good for Web pages and on-line reports

Separate Searches of Other Data Bases Yield More Information

• National Water Information System

- 24 streamgaging stations along the Potomac River

• Map-List Data Base

<- 2 1:24,000 scale topographic maps named "Potomac"

• National Geologic Maps Database

- 36 references to "Potomac"

• National Biological Information Infrastructure

- 1361 references to "Potomac" from various sources

• List of ALL databases that contain potentially relevant information
• Links that "drill down" into each database

• Permit fully integrated geographic and thematic searches of all USGS content
• Initial capability

- Search points and bounding rectangles of latitude/longitude
- Implement in Ultraseek

• Advanced Spatial Search Engine

- Search polygons
- Consider factors like footprint, shape, and data density to establish relevance ranking

• Extensive network upgrades
• Failure-resistant Web services

-When data access is most critical it is also most vulnerable -Content mirroring
-Geographically dispersed servers at major Internet gateways

• Land and Water Sustainability
• Coastal Habitat
• Environmental Change
• Land and Water Restoration
• Hazards
• Species and Habitats
• Land Resources
• River Management
• Nonrenewable Resources

• Provides a common enabling structure so anyone can find, get, and use the data and information they need to:

- Integrate relevant data and information to solve scientific problems - Make decisions - Educate and learn - Create new products and services - Use USGS scientific information in ways we have not envisioned