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Global Fiducials Library
Overview
The Global Fiducials Library (GFL)
is a long-term archive of images from U.S. National Imagery Systems which represents a long-term periodic record for selected scientifically important sites. The
GFL
was created to be the collection, archive and data management component of the Global Fiducials Program.
The Global Fiducials Program is a collaborative effort between Federal Civil Agencies, Academia, and the Intelligence Community. The principal goal of the Global Fiducials Program was to build and maintain a long-term record of data to support scientists and policy makers involved in that collaborative effort. At the inception of the Program, it was hoped that at some point - perhaps as much as twenty-five years into the future - the acquired data could be openly released to support future scientists and policy makers as well. Since the 1990s, the Global Fiducials Program has been periodically collecting images of environmentally significant sites around the world.
The
GFL
, which is the archive that maintains this long-term imagery record, is managed by the U.S. Geological Survey under the National Civil Applications Program, in partnership with the Civil Applications Committee. The
GFL
archive is dedicated to ensuring that images of these selected sites are collected, maintained and made available to scientists and policy makers in support of scientific investigations into global dynamic systems and change. Until recently, use of these data were limited to an intelligence environment. Now, in what constitutes a change in the programmatic time line, the goal of the Global Fiducials Program is to make this extensive collection of images publicly available. This has been accomplished through the generation of unrestricted imagery derived products provides a high value way to offer valuable select imagery products to the scientific community. Essentially, the Global Fiducials Program is a proactive effort to "plan ahead for hindsight."
Fiducial Sites
A Fiducial site is a geographic location that is used as a benchmark for the long-term monitoring of processes, both natural and anthropogenic, associated with the causes and effects of global environmental change. The word fiducial carries multiple meanings with regard to the
GFL
. Fiducials are marks or points of reference applied to images to present a fixed standard of reference, so in the
GFL
they refer to the identification of a place on the Earth. The term fiducial may also be interpreted to refer to a long-term trust, where one may be holding something in trust for another. Both references aptly apply, as the
GFL
maintains a long-term record of data over specific places on the Earth to be available for scientific investigations. Fiducial sites are associated with Earth processes and environmentally sensitive areas that are being monitored so that scientists can better understand and model the dynamic systems and changes that are occurring. The sites are located around the globe and are distributed among environmental topics and processes within five major disciplines: Ocean Processes; Ice and Snow Dynamics; Atmospheric Processes; Land Use/Land Cover; and Geologic Processes.
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U.S. Geological Survey