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 Introduction
 The
Geospatial Data Gateway (Gateway) is intended to provide a single access point
for resource data. It provides a way to easily locate data that exist for
selected geographic areas, find the types of data for that area, and deliver
the data packaged in formats compatible with commercial and Service Center
application formats.
One major purpose of the
Gateway is to support the development, presentation, and dissemination of
information by Service Center field staff working in the field with customers
away from the office. However, the public has access to the Gateway
to find and retrieve resource data.
Data
The data sets served
by the Gateway are primarily determined by the USDA Service Center Geographic
Information System (GIS) Strategy. The data themes are listed on the
Gateway Data Management page. This page also identifies
non-geospatial data that may be available through the Gateway.
Metadata
Metadata is data about data.
Searching the metadata for theme, keywords, and area of geographic coverage
allows the Gateway to find appropriate data for you far more quickly than
searching the actual databases themselves.
The creation of the metadata
is the responsibility of the data stewards. The Gateway team is
investigating available technology for generating the metadata files directly
from the existing databases in an automated method.
The
metadata
standards developed by the FGDC (Federal Geographic Database Committee)
will be used unless the international standard ISO 15046-15 is finalized prior
to the creation of the metadata. By using the FGDC metadata standards, the
Geospatial Data Gateway can serve data to
Federal
Clearinghouse nodes and become a node itself for those layers for which the
USDA is the steward.
Browsers
A Java-enabled browser must
be used to navigate through the geospatial data of the Gateway. Recommended
browsers are Netscape 4.76 (or higher) and Internet Explorer 5.5 (or higher).
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