Intellectual Merit: Over the past three decades, digital seismic reflection techniques have played a major role in advancing our understanding of a wide range of Earth problems, from the history of sea level rise and earth's past climate, to oceanic crust formation, to the structure of tsunamogenic faults zones at subduction boundaries. Seismic reflection data, while of high value for a broad range of studies, are also costly to acquire. Preservation of these data is essential to maximize their utility and ensure they remain available for future uses beyond those envisioned by the originally funded NSF project. Two linked marine seismic data centers have been developed that serve digital collections of NSF-sponsored projects going back to the first acquisition projects in 1974. These centers contain field and processed data that currently exceeds 10 TB, along with data access, discovery and visualization tools. New developments in geoinformatics hold great promise for expanding access to these digital collections and broadening participation in geoscience research.
In this project seismic reflection field data and subsequently processed data will be captured and preserved, including data from the new National Marine Seismic Facility, the R/V Langseth, the only dedicated academic seismic ship. Aggregation and preservation of newly generated seismic data will continue, including processed data from single channel projects from any UNOLS ship, and for some others where field seismic data not being systematically archived. Older field and processed data will also be captured and preserved from more than 50 programs of which ~30 are dispersed mostly among scientists. A mechanism will be developed to track data submissions, which should help the scientific community and NSF evaluate compliance with data sharing guidelines. Seamless metadata interoperability will be developed across the two data centers to demonstrate the ability of distributed data centers to provide the underlying metadata and services aligned for modern discovery, analysis and sharing. The key legacy of this project is to enable more complete discovery of and access to seismic reflection data in the public domain, some directly, through the holdings in these two data centers, and much more from promoting a shared metadata framework with other resources for seismic data in the U.S.
Broader Impacts: This system provides a simple way for scientists to share data thereby promoting academic research and education and meeting NSF expectations for sharing the data, samples, physical collections, and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of the work. The impact from the ongoing seismic archiving and distribution projects within the two data centers is significant and widespread; over 37,000 seismic files have been amassed, representing much of the legacy of modern academic marine seismic reflection exploration, and over 16,000 files have been distributed to a wide variety of users from academic, government and commercial enterprises. These digital data collections will be usable for more advanced research tools (e.g., GeoMapApp) as well as new tools as they are developed.
This grant supported the ongoing development of the Academic Seismic Portal, a free web-accessible repository of active source marine seismic field data collected with NSF support for scientific research goals (www.marine-geo.org/portals/seismic). Marine seismic data represent an essential data type for a wide range of fundamental earth science studies including investigations of past climatic and sea level conditions, the transfer and accumulation of sediments at continental margins and the processes of crustal formation, modification and destruction at the world's plate boundaries. The primary focus of the ASP repository is the long-streamer multi-channel seismic (MSC) data acquired with the global ocean class research vessel, the R/V Langseth, and earlier generation ships supporting seismic research within the U.S. academic research fleet, as well as high-resolution MCS data acquired with portable systems. The ASP repository ensures the long-term preservation and public accessibility of these data, including the full data documentation needed for future reuse. The ASP data collection now includes the majority of modern digital multi-channel seismic reflection field data acquired for NSF funded academic research with total data holdings of ~42 TeraBytes from ~ 150 research expeditions dating back to the 1980’s. These high value data are made available through a modern data management system consistent with current developments in geoinformatics. The data system was widely used over the project period with over 120 TeraBytes of data downloaded from over 2700 unique user requests.
