The goals of the MagIC project have been to develop an open community digital data archive for rock and paleomagnetic data with web portals that allow users free access to archive, search and download data in a broad range of formats. Part of the project has involved the transition of existing databases developed under the auspices of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) to the new archive. This award provides funds for the continued development and maintenance of the MagIC facility and for continued integration of the PI?s efforts to operate with other online databases. Now that the MagIC database is functional and contains a critical mass of data, there is a strong desire in the rock and paleomagnetic community to expand and enhance the existing data analysis and visualization tools.
The further development of the MagIC database and website will create a Cyberinfrastructure where researchers, teachers and students can find and visualize rock and paleomagnetic data. It will provide a tool to answer daily research questions or to find new pathways in addressing today?s grand challenges in geomagnetism, climate research, plate tectonics and geodynamics.
The major goal of this proposal has been the development of cyberinfrastructure enabling free and open access to specialized digital research data that will enable progress on long-standing standing scientific challenges of interest to paleo- and rock magnetic researchers and others in related geoscience communities. We have built the MagIC website under the umbrella of EarthRef.org which supports several related earth science databases. MagIC supports databases for magnetic data associated with research publications and provides a flexible data model with the means to archive multiple kinds of data and associated information in tables necessary to use them for future disciplinary and interdisciplinary research. Under NSF support the MagIC initiative has reached several important goals. First it provides a technologically accessible solution for rock and paleomagnetists to personally make standardized digital versions of all their data and research results, and place them in a public location accessible to the whole Earth science community. A second goal of providing a practical everyday research tool is facilitated by the MagIC website design. Before data are published, scientists can share them with selected colleagues using the online database in a protected or private manner. This group sharing allows remote viewing, manipulation of the data using online and offline tools, and evaluation in the context of other public domain datasets. Further development of the MagIC database and website has provided a streamlined interface using open source cyberinfrastructure tools to answer routine research questions, including finding, visualizing, and interpreting rock and paleomagnetic data. Within the structure we have also built an effective data review system that facilitates quality control through editorial and peer review of submitted data. Information about geological locations, rock type, age information, and sampling methods follows generic formats used by other EarthRef databases and will facilitate future interoperability among earth science databases. The PMAG database within MagIC has migrated information from pre-existing paleomagnetic databases that are no longer actively supported. These data have been combined with new efforts to populate the database. MagIC currently contains information from several thousand publications, and provides a strategic tool for researchers seeking new pathways to address grand challenges in climate research, geomagnetism, plate tectonics, and geodynamics.
