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What is Mercury?
Mercury (a.k.a. Beija-flor) is a Web-based
system to search for metadata and retrieve associated data. Mercury
incorporates a number of important features. Mercury
To learn more about these features, see our Highlights
page. Mercury's innovative approach is currently featured on Blue Angel
Technologies' Web site as a
Case
Study. For other information, including tutorials, see the Learn About Mercury page.
Mercury also implements a progressive cost-sharing model called the Mercury
Consortium. To learn about the consortium and active projects, see the Mercury Consortium
page. To find published articles referring to Mercury, see Mercury
in the News.
May 7, 2003
 | Introduced the I3N - IABIN Invasives Information Network search
system (http://mercury.ornl.gov/iabin). IABIN (Inter-American
Biodiversity Information Network) is both an Internet-based
information resource with common infrastructure and content,
interoperable through the use of common standards, and a forum for
institutions and individuals to discuss the issues related to sharing
and exchange of biodiversity information.
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April 18, 2003
| Introduced Mercury EOS the ORNL DAAC's ECHO (EOS Clearinghouse)
client. This version of Mercury EOS allows for ordering of data from
the ORNL DAAC only.
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May 14, 2002
May 6, 2002
| ORNL begins hosting of the metadata server for NBII's "Primary
Node". This node of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)
Clearinghouse was previously hosted in Denver. |
April 17, 2002
| The Mercury team registered four Z39.50 databases in the National
Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Clearinghouse. They are:
1. NASA ORNL DAAC Holdings - Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed
Active Archive
2. NASA ORNL DAAC EOS Land Validation - Earth Observing System Land
Validation Program
3. NASA ORNL DAAC RGD - Regional and Global Data on Terrestrial
Biogeochemistry from Related Sources
4. SAFARI 2000 Southern African Regional Science Initiative.
Each of these data sources are now available via NSDI along with the
previously registered LBA database. |
April 17, 2002
April 9, 2002
| ORNL's Paul Kanciruk and Tim Rhyne, along with representatives of
Environment Canada, co-hosted a full day workshop titled Metadata
Across Organizations at the Canadian Ecological Monitoring and
Assessment Network 8th National Science Meeting in Gatineau, Canada.
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For older news, see the status page.
Below is a list of important links for projects using Mercury. For a
brief description of these projects, please go the the Mercury
Consortium page.
LBA-Ecology/Hydrometeorology
LBA-DIS (Brazil)
Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Federation
Mercury EOS
IABIN Invasives Information Network (I3N)
SAFARI 2000
EOS Land Validation
ORNL DAAC Regional and Global Data
NARSTO
Carbon Sequestration
National Biological Information Infrastructure
Environmental Data for the Oak Ridge Area
(including the Walker Branch Watershed)
Mercury was developed at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. ORNL is operated by UT-Battelle, L. L.
C., for the United States Department of Energy. Initial projects
originated through the ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center, but all work
arrangements are with ORNL proper. Within ORNL, two divisions, Environmental
Sciences Division and Computational Physics and Engineering Division partner to
provide and develop Mercury.
The name Mercury refers to the Roman messenger god. This name was
selected for its connotation of speed and is used for the system in all projects
except LBA (see next topic).
The Large-scale Biosphere Atmosphere (LBA) Experiment in Amazonia project
selected the name Beija-flor (which means
"flower kisser" in Portuguese) for its implementation of
Mercury. Beija-flor is represented by a hummingbird (Brazil's
national bird) that travels from flower to flower gathering nectar, much like Beija-flor
travels from Web site to Web site gathering metadata.
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