The Mojave Desert Ecosystem Program (MDEP) project represents a long-term, joint venture between the DoD, DoI, State and Academic organizations with interests in the Mojave Ecosystem. The goal, over the next few years, is to provide those interested in the management and/or research in this region a spatial database of Natural and Cultural resources data that are co-registered to a common map base, and cover the entire ecoregion.
The linkage between the MDEP and Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) is a natural one. It's intent is to design the MDEP database to be compliant with ADL metadata structures and hence meet national standards for metadata creation, data storage, and retrieval. ADL users will have complete access to information served by the MDEI web server located at Fort Irwin, California.
The Mojave Desert Ecosystem Program (MDEP) was funded in 1995 and represents the Department of Defense's (DoD) first attempt to meld together a shared scientific database that can be used to affect dynamic sustainable land management decisions throughout an entire ecoregion. It is not itself a management process, but a tool to enable more accurate modeling of environmental factors that will facilitate data driven management within the Mojave Desert Ecosystem. Additionally, MDEP fits within the framework of broad base management plans being promulgated under the Department of the Interior.
A liaison between UCSB and Utah State University (USU) is in the process of converting spatial and text based information collected for the MDEP into FGDC/ADL compliant metadata. The work completed so far includes developing an understanding of ADL metadata structures and a method of converting current metadata records into this structure. Furthermore, initial steps have been completed for the inclusion of a spatially referenced bibliography developed by USU for the MDEP into ADL. The work that we plan to have completed by 6/30/97 includes (1) a complete inclusion of metadata records developed for the MDEP into ADL; (2) the development of a user interface to allow spatial queries to a spatially referenced bibliography; and (3) an investigation of methods of accessing and analyzing data through ADL.