The Arctic Permafrost Geospatial Center – a portal for high-quality open access scientific permafrost datasets

• Main Authors: Laboor, Sebastian, Muster, Sina, Nitze, Ingmar, Heim, Birgit, Haas, Antonie, Walter, Andreas, Matthes, Jörg, Bartsch, Annett, Grosse, Guido
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: AGU 2020
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica; Arctic; Ice; permafrost
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/53798/; https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm20/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/729333; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.9674f6d6-ca75-470a-899f-b5fadba448e1

Thematic Open Access data portals foster and support an open data culture in order to reduce knowledge gaps and data uncertainty. Here we present the Arctic Permafrost Geospatial Center (APGC), which provides open access, high quality spatial data in the field of permafrost research. The distribution and easy access of a wide range of permafrost-related data products supports multi-scale and interdisciplinary analysis of combined field, remote sensing and modelling data. The APGC mission is to provide data that is of high usability, significance and impact, and to facilitate data discovery, data view and supports metadata documentation and exchange via the APGC data catalogue at https://apgc.awi.de/. The catalogue structure can host data models of varying themes, formats, and spatial and temporal extents. Data can be searched by interactively selecting locations on a base map and by many predefined metadata filters. Data can be downloaded directly through a link to the publishing data repository such as PANGAEA. The Catalogue is based on the open source CKAN catalogue architecture, which allows on-the-fly access to catalogued data in QGIS. The APGC currently features over 200 selected datasets from projects such as ERC PETA-CARB, ESA GlobPermafrost, and others. Data products provide information about surface and subsurface permafrost characteristics in the Arctic, Antarctica, or mountain permafrost areas, e.g., soil temperatures, soil carbon, ground ice, land cover, vegetation, periglacial landforms, subsidence and more. Collections of datasets allow users to easily get an overview of the spatial distributions of datasets or their availability in different formats. An additional WebGIS application allows users to explore most of the data interactively (https://maps.awi.de). Data submissions are evaluated according to the following access criteria: permafrost focus, broader significance and impact, open access, high quality, and available metadata.