Documentation

The Southeast Coastal Ocean Report aims to provide a synopsis of (1) the status of the evolving regional coastal ocean observing system, (2) recent, major environmentally significant events, (3) brief updates from regional and sub-regional coastal ocean observation programs. This inaugural report has been developed by SEACOOS, though it is not meant to be SEACOOS-centric. The intention is that this report will be expanded and enhanced in future years, and will provide a regular analysis of significant observed conditions and events and will include a broader set of contributors and topics.

The Year 4 Annual Report details the current progress toward fulfilling the Implementation Plan. The report breaks down by working group activity and partner institution.

The Data Management and Visualization Cookbook spells out the best practices SEACOOS investigators have followed for collecting, processing, and serving coastal ocean observations and model output including aggregated subregional data. Regional coastal ocean observing systems are invited to use the accumulated wisdom of SEACOOS research as well as provide feedback. Within this cookbook find recpies for setting up the technical infrastructure for an entire regional coastal ocean observing system from soup to nuts. The cookbook is continually updated with new practices and procedures.

The SEACOOS NetCDF Common Data Language Specification v2.0 describes a set of conventions adopted by the SouthEast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System partners and affiliates to promote sharing and exchange of data from disparate ocean observing and remote-sensing data sources. These data include observations from buoys, offshore towers, ships, tide- and stream-gauging stations, acoustic profilers, underwater autonomous vehicles, radar, aircraft, satellites and other remote mapping sensors. Regional coastal ocean observing systems may aggregate SEACOOS data with their own and vice versa by following this specification for data published through the OpenDAP protocol in NetCDF format.

The SECOORA Map of Observing Systems Resource Locations and Providers pinpoints current and potential academic, federal, state, and commercial sources of data for SEACOOS observations. Aggregating ocean observations from multiple sources is a major concern of SEACOOS data management. SECOORA is the regional association supporting SEACOOS research.

The Strategic Plan outlines the mission, goals, objectives, organizational components, and governance of the SEACOOS, a regional partnership formed to foster and promote the development of the coastal observing system for the Southeastern U.S., and to advance scientific understanding of the Southeast coastal ocean processes and systems.

The Implementation Plan lists the general principles, roles, priorities, timelines, themes, systems, functions, and development process of the SEACOOS, a pilot program to help define the Southeast regional coastal ocean observing system (RCOOS).

The SEACOOS project team, at their own request, commissioned an initial external review and programmatic assessment from a panel of evaluators representing academia, government and industry in an effort to obtain a broad and balanced perspective on the program to date. In the short time frame in which the evaluation was executed, the evaluation reflects not only the evaluators’ perceptions of SEACOOS and its merits and deficiencies, but also the ability of SEACOOS to concisely convey what the program is about. The findings in this report are to serve as guidance for the "fine tuning" of the future direction of the program.