The goals of the Open Earth Systems project are to develop capabilities to model global-scale interactions between the primary components of the Earth system -- the mantle, crust, core, ocean, and atmosphere, and to determine how these interactions control decisive events in Earth's history. Decisive events that uniquely shaped our planet, such as acquisition of surface water, atmosphere oxidation, super-continent formation and breakup, extreme volcanism, climate changes, geomagnetic reversals, and mass extinction events, all require mass and energy exchange between diverse parts of the Earth system that remain poorly understood at the fundamental level. Our project takes state-of-the-art numerical models of the mantle and crust, the core, the ocean, and the atmosphere, and for the first time, couples them together. Our specific objectives are to determine how Earth's dynamics, starting with mantle convection, alters the chemistry of the ocean and atmosphere, produces extreme volcanic activity, banded iron formations, leads to reversals of the geomagnetic field, and cycles oxygen, carbon, iron, and other essential constituents through the Earth system. The multi-disciplinary expertise for this effort is well represented in our investigator team, including Johns Hopkins University PIs Peter Olson, Linda Hinnov, Anand Gnanadesikan, and Darryn Waugh, in addition to PIs David Bercovici from Yale University, Michael Manga from UC Berkeley, and Shijie Zhong from the University of Colorado Boulder.
An integral part of this project is developing new approaches for recruiting underrepresented minorities into the geosciences. We are initiating an internship program called Geoscience Ingenuity, partnering with Ingenuity Project representatives and instructors at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, an engineering-oriented high school where the Baltimore Ingenuity Project is based. Geoscience Ingenuity offers mentoring and technical training for high school students working directly with the PIs and the staff on Open Earth System research projects. In addition, we offer summertime courses for Maryland teachers capitalizing on the widespread public interest in extreme natural phenomena, and emphasizing the roles these events play in the Earth system and their impacts on society, human history, public health, and current world affairs. Our FESD project serves as a cross-disciplinary training platform for graduate students, with a particular focus on providing the intellectual environment and the research tools for training graduate students in the solution of geoscience problems that span the Earth system from the core to the atmosphere.
Our project focuses on several key interactions between different parts of the Earth system that critical to the Earth's long-term evolution, by coupling together a suite of well established models we call Open Earth Systems. Discipline-specific models in Open Earth Systems include CIG model CitcomS for mantle dynamics, tectonic evolution, and surface topography; GFDL models CM2.1 and CM2G for climate ocean-atmosphere-land interactions; GFDL model GOLD for ocean dynamics, CIG model MAG and also MAGIC for core dynamics and the geodynamo, and MELTS for magma systems. These models are modified to allow for coupling with the other models in the Open Earth System, in order to investigate the following grand challenge hypotheses: (1) The evolution of large-scale mantle convection and plate dynamics governs the history of global sea level, continental uplift, and large igneous events, with changes in plate motion, plate boundaries, and ocean basins caused by subduction zone formation along dormant plate boundaries; (2) Lowered sea level due to the geodynamic effects in (1) enhances the Earth system capacity for trapping carbon in the deep ocean, and conversely, raised sea level and increased roughness of the bottom topography during continental breakup and large igneous events increases the likelihood of hypoxia events in the deep ocean; (3) Variations in the frequency of reversals in the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale reflect changing dynamical and thermal conditions in the mantle and their affect on the core, initiate magnetic superchrons, and produce frequently reversing geodynamo states during the Phanerozoic; (4) Crustal age peaks correspond to peaks in crustal production rates from variable mantle convection modified by selective preservation, and Precambrian BIF peaks correspond to large igneous events modified by selective preservation.
