This Web page is designed for people who collected BOREAS data and are now trying to create documentation for their data sets. You may be wondering why we here at the BOREAS Information System (BORIS) put so much emphasis on the documentation as well as the data -- well read on...
In order to aid in the creation of your data set or model documentation, we have created an outline (a blank document) filled with comments to help you fill in all the sections of the document. If you are not clear on how to fill out some section, check one of the sample documents listed below to see how others have done it.
View the current BOREAS Data Set Documentation Outline |
View the current BOREAS Model Documentation Outline |
The BOREAS documentation follows a standard format. All documents have the same structure to ease working with several diverse data sets. This standard structure must encompass data types as diverse as soil-type classifications and Landsat images, and some sections will not apply to your data set. Simply fill these sections in as "Not Applicable", or if you do not have the information, enter "Not Known". Please try to fill in all sections, so that future users know that certain information does not exist, and they do not have to continue looking through the document for it.
The descriptions in each section should be detailed enough to allow a new user to confidently use the data without the necessity of contacting the group who provided the data (that's you). The level of the documentation should be aimed to a graduate student or an investigator working outside of his/her field.
This version of the data documentation outline follows the standard one used by the NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) -- the main repository for all NASA data (and the eventual destination of all BOREAS data and documentation). It is organized differently than the outline found in the 1994 BOREAS Experiment Plan. Several years ago, the NASA DAACs adopted parts of the original BOREAS Documentation Outline for use in their entire data system, but they had to modify it to cover all of their different data types. To comply with this new and improved DAAC format, we have replaced our old 15-part format with the new 20-part format. The new format is not very different in content from the old format -- if you have a document in the old format, click here to see how to change it to the new format.
Here is a collection of sample BOREAS data set and modelling documents that you can view in order to see how others wrote up their data and models.
Aircraft Flux and Meteorology (AFM)
not ready yet (sorry)
Hydrology (HYD)
HYD-9 Stream Gauge Data
Remote Sensing Sciences (RSS)
RSS-2 ASAS Aircraft Data
RSS-8 BIOME-BGC Model Data
Terrestrial Ecology (TE)
TE-9 Nitrogen and Photosynthesis Data
TE-9 PAR & Nitrogen Profile Data
Trace Gas Biogeochemistry (TGB)
TGB-9 Non-Methane Hydrocarbon Data
Tower Flux (TF)
not ready yet (sorry)