Review Comment 7

The model seems well-reasoned and has a reasonable lineage with the Global Change Master Directory and the Global Change Data and Information System. However, I consider placing spatial metadata in the recommended category a nearly fatal error. Geographic search is critical to earth science research, especially for cross-disciplinary analysis, and the majority of global change data have spatial attributes. These absolutely have to be in all levels of the metadata. This was central to the early GCDIS discussions.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.