OcToPUS provides a gateway to many datasets related to the marine environment. The datasets are harmonised and can be searched seamlessly by variable name, geographic area, depth, time and resolution. There are several ways to access data in OcToPUS.
The Ocean Data Explorer provides an intuitive interface to search datasets that are available through OcToPUS. Data can be queried, analysed and visualised in space, time and depth. Direct download options are provided along with respective OGC Web Service URLs for programmatic access. Watch this short video to see how it works.
OcToPUS uses Geoserver to expose its data as OGC Web Services (WMS, WCS, WFS). These services can be used by third party applications such as desktop GIS or online maps to access data from OcToPUS programmatically. Example URLs for WMS and WCS queries are provided below. More queries can be found in the download section for each dataset in the Ocean Data Explorer. Please also check out the Geoserver documentation if you want to learn more about how to construct OGC Web Service URLs.
https://octopus.zoo.ox.ac.uk/geoserver/wms?service=WMS&version=1.3.0&request=GetMap&width=1500&height=750&layers=processes:npp_mn_p1y_009_vgpm&format=image/png&bbox=-90,-180,90,180&time=2015-12&srs=EPSG:4326This URL issues a Web Map Service (WMS) request to get a rendered map of Net Primary Productivity (NPP) with annual mean temporal resolution (MN_P1Y), native spatial resolution of 0.09 degrees (009) from the Vertically Generalized Production Model (VGPM). The query returns a rendered image as PNG (FORMAT), for a spatial bounding box (BBOX), time (TIME) and Coordinate Reference System (CRS).
https://octopus.zoo.ox.ac.uk/geoserver/wcs?service=WCS&version=1.0.0&request=GetCoverage&coverage=processes:sst_p1m_009_avhrr&format=geotiff&bbox=-126,32,-117.4,48.2&time=2012-12&crs=EPSG:4326&resx=0.09&resy=0.09This URL issues a Web Coverage Service (WCS) request to get coverage data of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) with monthly temporal resolution (P1M), native spatial resolution of 0.09 degrees (009) from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). The data are requested as GeoTIFF (FORMAT), for a spatial bounding box (BBOX), time (TIME), Coordinate Reference System (CRS) and resolution (RESX, RESY).
OcToPUS uses a Catalog Service of the Web (CSW) to define a common interface to discover, browse, and query metadata about data, services, and other resources offered through OcToPUS. As part of the preprocessing routines to ingest new datasets into OcToPUS we harmonise metadata between different sources and complement them if needed to follow international standards and best-practises for geo-spatial metadata handling.
OcToPUS gets data from a large variety of open sources. Keeping data origin transparent and acknowledging providers is of highest priority to us. The following list provides an overview of currently used sources and institutions that provide the datasets. More details for specific datasets are shown in the Ocean Data Explorer and are embedded in the file headers.