The Global Fiducials Library (GFL) is a long-term archive of images from U.S. National Imagery Systems which represents a long-term periodic record for selected scientifically important sites. The GFL was created to be the collection, archive and data management component of the Global Fiducials Program.

The Global Fiducials Program is a collaborative effort between Federal Civil Agencies, Academia, and the Intelligence Community. The principal goal of the Global Fiducials Program was to build and maintain a long-term record of data to support scientists and policy makers involved in that collaborative effort. At the inception of the Program, it was hoped that at some point - perhaps as much as twenty-five years into the future - the acquired data could be openly released to support future scientists and policy makers as well. Since the 1990s, the Global Fiducials Program has been periodically collecting images of environmentally significant sites around the world.

The GFL, which is the archive that maintains this long-term imagery record, is managed by the U.S. Geological Survey under the National Civil Applications Program, in partnership with the Civil Applications Committee. The GFL archive is dedicated to ensuring that images of these selected sites are collected, maintained and made available to scientists and policy makers in support of scientific investigations into global dynamic systems and change. Until recently, use of these data were limited to an intelligence environment. Now, in what constitutes a change in the programmatic time line, the goal of the Global Fiducials Program is to make this extensive collection of images publicly available. This has been accomplished through the generation of unrestricted imagery derived products provides a high value way to offer valuable select imagery products to the scientific community. Essentially, the Global Fiducials Program is a proactive effort to "plan ahead for hindsight."

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