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.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>