Accessing Earth system science data and applications through high-bandwidth networks

We discuss gigabit network applications enabled by “Mission to Planet Earth”, an international effort to monitor the Earth as a system. We describe the design of a network architecture to support applications developed as part of this program; introduce a new component, public access resource centers (PARCs); and discuss how PARCs would facilitate access by users outside the traditional research community. We also describe how a particular class of users, agriculture users, might benefit from access to data collected as part of the Mission to Planet Earth program and delivered in a value-added form to them by a so-called AgPARC. The suggested architecture requires the deployment of high-bandwidth networks