This workshop will begin the process of developing a community wide, web-based resource that tells Earth's story and provides the earth science community with a research tool that researchers can use to "see how their data fits" into the grand story of Earth System evolution. Workshop participants will discuss how to build such a dynamic internet resource. The focus of the workshop is to create an internet resource that integrates plate tectonic, paleogeographic and paleoclimatic mapping with existing and potential future on-line Earth Science databases (e.g., The Paleobiology Database, GeoStratSys, COSUNA database, PALYNODATA [palynology], USGS mineral database, GlobalGeology, and others). Such a system would provide scientifically-accurate, publicly accessible maps of the changing configuration of the continents and ocean basins back through time (~ 1 billion years). The plate tectonic history of the Earth provides the spatial-temporal framework required to better understand the evolution of life, the shift of global climate from Ice House to Hot House conditions, changes in the circulation and chemistry of the oceans, and the reshaping of the Earth's land surface. This will be the first such effort at developing a community-wide system/network in which all relevant subdisciplines can participate in and benefit from its results. This has come about because Chris Scotese freely contributes for use up front his non-proprietary web-based library of paleogeographic maps developed over the last 40 years through his work with industry and in part supported by NSF.
This grant funded a collaborative workshop to bring researchers together who are interested in the development of an online resource for integration of geologic datasets with paleogeographic information. The workshop took place in the summer of 2011 and was held at the Field Museum, Chicago IL. Researchers at the Field Museum and Northwestern University collaborated to host the event, although none of them are paleogeographers - they were asked to serve as hosts by NSF program directors in order to create a forum for the discussion of new cyberinfrastructure resources that would foster future innovative geoscience research. The bulk of the funding went to the Field Museum and they applied for, and received a no-cost extension until August 2013. Since most of the Northwestern budget was used to fund the event itself, including graduate student note takers, whose results were used to create the summary of workshop discussions, Northwestern did not seek a no-cost extension and has closed out the grant. The co-PI's decided that the best outcome of the workshop would be to hold a GSA sympoisum on the topic open to the entire geoscience community. The funds remaining in the Field Museum budget are being used to support planning and implementation of the symposium for the 2013 meeting.
