has increased by 
ge of the other 
by a factor of 3 
Cnet). In fact, 
e in the number 
dom phenomena 
related to the 
y availability of 
> 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Dec | Total 
189 696 
294 | 2810 
1079 
| GCNet 
  
  
  
"Net via Internet. 
rcentage of users 
has quadrupled. 
Of this, there is 
provide our users 
net tools such as 
. A Gopher server 
should be installed within the next year. 
4. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS 
Global Change programs are global in scope, 
hence they often require data held in widely 
dispersed national inventories or in inventories 
of other countries. Much effort is now being 
directed toward the development of standards in 
the areas of directories, inventories and 
communication between remote directories and 
inventories. Groups actively pursuing these 
standards include: the NASA Catalog 
Interoperability Working Group (which has 
representatives from several United States 
agencies and other organizations such as the 
European Space Agency and CCRS), the 
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites 
(CEOS) Catalog Subgroup (which has 
representatives from many countries with active 
space programs) and the Earth Observation 
System (EOS). 
An interesting initiative called Catalogue 
Interoperability Experiment (CINTEX), 
sponsored by CEOS, involves participants from 
United States and Europe, and has been under 
way for about two years now. The CINTEX 
participants are smoothing away the technical 
difficulties arising when trying to operate 
heterogeneous and distributed systems in a 
client-server environment. 
A demonstration on catalogue interoperability 
was done at the last CEOS Catalogue Subgroup 
meeting in Ottawa in February 1994. An EOS 
catalogue search client demonstrated the 
capability to retrieve catalogue information from 
servers located in the United States and Europe. 
The communication process between the various 
systems involved is handled by the Internet 
network. Further work is going on to provide 
users with an interface as seamless and robust as 
possible. 
CCRS feels that its users would benefit from 
such an information infrastructure and 
participation in CINTEX is planned. Initial plans 
are to have the Landsat and SPOT catalogues 
made accessible to the CINTEX community. 
GCNet will also be tied in to other important 
projects such as Land Information Network for 
Canada (LINC) and Canadian Earth Observation 
Network (CEONet). These will allow access to 
on-line databases of products available from the 
SMRSS and from other Canadian earth 
Observation agencies. 
4. CONCLUSION 
So far, the user response to GCNet has been 
very favourable. The usage of the various 
services offered keeps growing every year and 
user's comments and suggestions have been very 
valuable in upgrading the system such that it 
better fulfils their needs. Further developments 
will be done in order to make better use of the 
services available on Internet (Gopher, WWW). 
CCRS is also actively participating in some 
international activities in the fields of catalogue 
information exchange, such as the International 
Directory Network, to ensure that Canadian 
Global Change users can access the data they 
require in a timely and coherent fashion. It is 
also important that the standards adopted by 
these groups meet our needs and that GCNet 
functions according to those standards. 
5. REFERENCES 
[1] Fisher, T.A. and R. Boudreau, 1991. "Data 
Management for Global Change”. 
Proceedings of the 1991 Canadian 
Conference on GIS, March 18-22, Ottawa, 
Ontario, pp. 138-144. 
[2] Fisher, T.A., J. Cihlar and R. Boudreau, 
1991. "Global Change Network (GCNet". 
Proceedings of the 14th Canadian 
Symposium on Remote Sensing, Calgary, 
Alberta, May 6-10, pp. 153-157. 
[3] National Space Science Data Centre, 1989. 
"The NASA Master Directory, Quick 
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