Feature types

Feature types are defined by NCEI and provide structure types of data to expect. More information is available in general and for the current NCEI NetCDF Templates 2.0. The following information may be useful for thinking about this. In particular, you select locstream, locstreamT, and locstreamZ as a user for em.select() and this table can guide how to select.

	timeSeries	profile	timeSeriesProfile	trajectory (TODO)	trajectoryProfile	grid (TODO)
Definition	only t changes	only z changes	t and z change	t, y, and x change	t, z, y, and x change	t changes, y/x grid
Data types	mooring, buoy	CTD profile	moored ADCP	flow through, 2D drifter	glider, transect of CTD profiles, towed ADCP, 3D drifter	satellite, HF Radar
Model extraction	time series at surface or depth		vertical cross section	2D drifters	3D drifters	regridding, x/y slice in depth
X/Y are pairs (“locstream”) or grid	either locstream or grid	either locstream or grid	either locstream or grid	locstream	locstream	grid
Which dimensions are independent from X/Y choice?
T	Independent	Independent	Independent	locstreamT	locstreamT	Independent
Z	Independent	Independent	Independent	Independent	locstreamZ	Independent