This award provides support to develop GEON 2.0 as a data integration facility for the Earth Sciences. The main scientific driver and intellectual merit of GEON 2.0 is facilitating integrated, multidimensional studies of the continents, starting at the surface with geologic and remote sensing data, and proceeding downward through the crust into the upper mantle, and extending back in time for 100?s of millions of years. Many major geoscientific efforts such as EarthScope, Continental Dynamics, IRIS, and GeoSwath have emphasized the need for well-resolved, 3Dmodels of the lithosphere and upper mantle to advance our understanding of the structure and evolution of the continents. Further, the community recognizes the critical need to add time into these models to make our analysis, modeling, and interpretation 4-D in nature. Understanding rates and histories is essential for developing models of lithospheric processes. Beyond gaining basic scientific knowledge about how our planet works, there are obvious motivations for studying the continents, including improved knowledge of natural hazards, natural resources, and environmental concerns.
GEON 2.0 will consolidate and leverage the substantial gains and investments made by the Geosciences Network (GEON, www.geongrid.org) Information Technology Research (ITR) project in developing cyberinfrastructure for the Earth Sciences. GEON was funded in 2002 as a collaboration involving 16 institutions in response to ??the pressing need in the geosciences to interlink and share multidisciplinary data sets to understand the complex dynamics of Earth systems.? The project has developed significant online resources accessible via the GEON Portal (portal.geongrid.org). Building upon this foundation, GEON 2.0 will develop the Open Earth Framework (OEF) for multidimensional integration of Earth Science data. The OEF will be based on open standards and will encompass a set of services for dataset access, data modeling, and data interaction and visualization. The PIs will introduce a set of volume services to deal with the modeling and manipulation of multidimensional Earth Science data. The development of the OEF will be community-driven, responding to the needs and requirements of the community, and obtaining feedback and input from the community.
Addressing the cyberinfrastructure needs for such an integrative information technology platform is a challenging undertaking and certainly beyond the capability of any one group. A facility such as GEON 2.0 is needed in order to bring together multidisciplinary teams and to make substantial progress. GEON 2.0 will develop its services and capabilities in collaboration with other Geoinformatics projects and PI efforts.
Broader impacts:
GEON 2.0 will have broad impact by providing cyberinfrastructure and geoinformatics services in support of the goal of multidimensional data integration. Core services will help the community access the Facility to register data and tools and use the system, and develop interoperability with the OEF. Limited-term Project-based activities will fund collaborations with specific groups with the goal of enhancing functionality or introducing new functionality into the system. Examples of such projects are : (i) serving airborne LiDAR and other remote sensing data sets, including ASTER, WinSAR, and LANDSAT imagery, (ii) serving high resolution topography data from ground-based laser scans obtained as part of the INTERFACE project, and (iii) development of the GEON Integrated Data Visualization (IDV) software to interoperate with the OpenEarth Framework.
GEON will continue its significant outreach and education efforts via the Cyberinfrastructure Summer Institute for Geoscientists (CSIG), workshops and exhibitor booths at the national meetings of the AGU, GSA and the Society for the Advancement of Chicano and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), and project technical workshops, which will involve community members. The PIs have developed active and on-going collaborations with India, Japan, and New Zealand. They have made initial contact with potential collaborators in China and will develop this activity further.
A major research goal in the geosciences is the construction of geologically realistic (i.e., as complex as in nature) 3-dimensional models (x, y, z or latitude, longitude, depth/elevation) of earth structure and variations in physical properties such as seismic velocity (P-wave and S-wave), density, and electrical resistivity. The diversity of data types, file formats, and visualization techniques required to integrate multi-dimensional geoscience data are a significant challenge. The physical basis of many geophysical techniques is inherently scale-independent so it is realistic to aspire to build models that range in scale from the near surface (environmental and groundwater studies), to geologic studies of features such as basins and fault zones, to studies of tectonic plates and their boundaries, to mantle dynamics, to studies of the core and its boundaries. In order to construct such models, software that enables the integration of a wide range of geological and geophysical data is required. This software should also facilitate the application of empirical and theoretical relationships that provide constraints for integrated modeling via estimations of relationships between various physical properties (e.g., P-wave velocity, S-wave velocity and density), the effects of porosity, and the effects of pressure and temperature. Tools for modeling geophysical and geologic data and honoring independent constraints exist for 2-dimensional approaches. Expanding the analysis schemes to 3 dimensions, while quantitatively assessing resolution and moving smoothly between different modeling approaches for different types of data is very challenging. Building upon the data and services infrastructure developed in GEON, the GEON 2.0 project developed the OpenEarth Framework (OEF), precisely in order to address these challenges in 3 dimensional data. A solution requires careful software engineering to manage large and complex data efficiently within a modular framework that can support plug-in data importers, visualization techniques, and user interface controls. The OpenEarth Framework (OEF) is a Java-based open source cross-platform modular geoscience data fusion and visualization software toolkit based upon NASA’s open-source WorldWind virtual globe. WorldWind provides a solid foundation for drawing global maps and image layers, while OEF adds functions associated with data management, file import, visualization rendering, and user interfaces for visual data fusion. Together, the OEF plus World Wind platform provides interactive virtual globe visualization that allows integrated spatial data to be represented and rendered both above and below the Earth’s surface, including data from web service maps, polygonal shapes, point data, node-and-edge graphs, volumetric isosurfaces and cutting planes, and raster layers. Several other initiatives have leveraged the cyberinfrastructure concepts, design, and software developed in this project. Projects such as the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) have gone on to become independent, well-established, successful initiatives. Similarly, OpenTopography, which began initially as the GEON LiDAR Workflow (GLW) project, has spun out from a research and development effort into a production-level earth science data facility funded by the NSF EAR Facilities program. Key outcomes from this project include: Development of the OpenEarth Framework Software (OEF, oef.geongrid.org). The core software infrastructure from OEF was also leveraged to build other complex, interactive visualization environments, including for visualization of outputs from large-scale epidemiological simulations. Publication of an edited book entitled, Geoinformatics: Cyberinfrastructure for the Solid Earth Sciences, Editors: Co-PI Randy Keller and PI Chaitanya Baru, published by Cambridge University Press, June 2011, ISBN 9780521897150. Creation of a CyberShare facility by Co-PI Ann Gates, at Univ. of Texas El Paso. CyberShare learned the lessons from GEON about leveraging cyberinfrastructure to provide core research capabilities in more than one discipline. The vision of CyberShare is to become "nationally and internationally recognized for innovative cyber-enhanced research and education to enable collaborative, interdisciplinary science and engineering." The Mission of CyberShare is to "advance and integrate cyber-enhanced, collaborative, and interdisciplinary education and research through technologies that support the acquisition, exchange, analysis, and integration of data, information, and knowledge." The goals of CyberShare are to: To create a CI-enabled synergistic environment to advance innovative and interdisciplinary research in science, engineering, and education. To train and educate a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists who can effectively use CI-based software services and middleware and tools. The GEON 2.0 project has provided education and training in geoinformatics and cyberinfrastructure, targeted to the earth science research community--including graduate students, postdocs, and faculty in academia; as well as practitioners from industry and government agencies. The Cyberinfrastructure Summer Institute for Geoscientists (CSIG) was conducted in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. In 2013, this was offered as the EarthCube Summer Institute for Technology Exploration (ECSITE'13). A total of over 140 individuals attended these training programs.
