Strategy for Rescuing endangered data of Cryosphere Research

Lizong Wu, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Insititue, CAS, China

This paper state the status of data archiving in China's croshpere research, review the achievement of WDC for Glaciology and Geocryology, Lanzhou in rescuing endangered data sets, and summarizes the vital importance to the scientific community of rescuing historic scientific data.

    From 1979 to 2002, Chinese scientists have completed a comprehensive inventory of glaciers in China, and published the China Glacier Inventory, which totally include 11 volumes. To facilitate the utilization and application of this achievement, a digital database of China glacier inventory was established. Considerable quality control had been carried out throughout the process of digitization.The digital data were uesd in broad research, but errors existing in the data hold back the further application of the data. In this paper,the China glacier inventroy was recited as a case for the advance discuss.

    This paper discuss the cost of rescuing endangered data, the value and data quality of historic data, especially comparing with today's data with better quality.It is proposed to discuss the management, modification and analysis of the historic data in the short paper.

Keywords: IPY, cryoshpere, data rescuing