This collaborative geoinformatics project will involve a team of researchers at the University of Illinois - Chicago (Flower, EAR-0238199), Houston (Khan, EAR-0237999), Missouri (Sandvol, EAR-0238199) and SUNY-Buffalo (Sultan, EAR-0237481). The team will build an interdisciplinary GIS database (TETHYS) as a tool for studying plate collision responses in the Tethyan belt. TETHYS will reside at the University of Illinois Supercomputer Facility - hub of StarTap, a high speed (155 Mbps) peering point for national and international research network traffic. This arrangement will accommodate the projected need for high-speed database queries, high-speed networking and advanced visualization expertise. The database will include digitized geological maps, structural indicators, geodetic data, remote sensing data, sample-based major and trace element abundances, radiometric ages, isotopic abundances for ophiolites, ultra-high pressure metamorphic rocks, collision-related magmatic bodies, and seismic data pertaining to mantle and crustal fabric and structure. On completion of the construction phase, the TETHYS GIS webserver will become a node of the national GEOscience Network (GEON); an ongoing initiative committed to creating solid earth geoscience cyberinfrastructure linking multidisciplinary geoscience data sets. ***
