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Earth Science in Cyberspace
By Dorothy Wright
Understanding how the Earth works in space and over time is the challenging goal of geological studies. It requires scientists from a multitude of disciplines to interpret and share a wide range of data on, among other things, time-temperature histories of rocks in geologic regions, sediment accumulations, fossil preservation, and changes in the configuration of plates and, thus, of continents and ocean basins.
Today, a geoscientist interested in understanding the history and evolution of a particular region of the Earth faces a laborious and time-consuming research process. She or he would have to search a number of individual disciplinary databases, if these even exist, sift through the relevant data sets, and patch the information together to create, at best, a simplified 3D model.
Imagine a moment in the future when this researcher could enter a simple online query and receive an answer that provided information from various geoscience databases about rock types; size distribution, chemistry and cooling rates of magmatic bodies; mineral compositions and the temperatures within the Earth deduced from them — and from these data could construct a 4D model of the geologic processes that influenced the development of a particular region of the Earth.
A group of earth-science researchers and information-technology (IT) researchers are working to make this scenario a reality. They are bringing leading-edge information science to bear on creating a cyberinfrastructure for the solid-earth geosciences, which will interlink multidisciplinary earth-science data in four dimensions. It is called the GEOscience Network (GEON) project.
The GEON project involves more than 50 researchers from 15 organizations in higher education, industry and government. Maria Luisa “Weecha” Crawford, professor of science, environmental studies and geology at Bryn Mawr, recently received a $362,000 continuing grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her part in this five-year, multimillion dollar project.
A Pressing Need
Driving the GEON project is a pressing need in the earth sciences for a national information infrastructure that enables geoscientists to share databases and tools that enable interdisciplinary research into a wide range of phenomena and topics. These include the interplay between tectonics and the evolution of sedimentary basins; the role of mountain-building in the evolution of climate and life; prediction and modeling of geologic hazards, such as earthquakes and volcanoes; 4D reconstruction of the planet Earth, and natural-resource management.
These types of problems require interdisciplinary analysis. Many past and ongoing projects in the geosciences have produced valuable disciplinary and specialty databases. However, what has been lacking is an integrated geoscience information system. The goal of GEON is to develop the necessary IT foundations and create an integrated system.
“Finally, computers are becoming powerful enough in memory and processing time to allow us to create a system that acts as a repository of fundamental observational geosciences data from multiple disciplines and integrates these data in response to very simple, broad queries,” Crawford explains.
Organizing the Data
Initially the project will focus on geosciences data from the mid-Atlantic and Rocky Mountain regions. “The plan is to have people from a variety of disciplines work with their data within a regional focus,” Crawford says. “The interests of those people who are involved in GEON happened to fall into these two regions.”
Crawford and a postdoctoral assistant to be hired for the project will compile data and maps on the metamorphic petrology and tectonic history of the mid-Atlantic. “We must figure out how best to organize our data so that generic queries can be managed by the information system to get the answers,” Crawford says. “We not only have to compile the data, but we also have to explain, in terms that a computer can understand, the connections between different bits of data.
“For example, if I request ‘pressure information from rocks,’ the computer has to understand what I mean by rocks, and it has to know where pressure information comes from — that is, the chemical analyses from which pressure information can be derived,” Crawford continues. “So the geoscientists must clearly explain to the computer scientists what the computer needs to know to answer these types of questions.”
Building the GEON Grid
IT researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center are responsible for building the GEON grid. The project will investigate distributed computing approaches ranging from cluster-based grids connected via Internet2 to computing on the “regular” Internet. Initially the project will acquire two 8-node/16-CPU Linux clusters, each with a one-terabyte disk, and two 4-node/8-CPU clusters with a 500-gigabyte disk each. One 8-node cluster will host the GEON portal at Cornell University, and the other will be located at the University of Missouri. One 4-node cluster will be at Bryn Mawr.
“We recognized that this will be so computationally intensive that it will have to run on a distributed grid,” Crawford explains. “Bryn Mawr will serve as a sort of test case for the computer scientists, who are working toward making GEON widely accessible to scientists, government policymakers, engineers and educators.”
Transforming Geoscience Research
The researchers who are involved in the GEON project see it as nothing short of a geoscience revolution, which will transform the way geoscience research is conducted by opening new avenues for research and collaboration — indeed, build the foundation for creating geoscience “collaboratories.”
Crawford acknowledges this is a very ambitious goal. “It is so ambitious that I don’t think it’s going to happen in my own career lifetime,” she says. “But I can see such clear benefits to the kind of work I do that I think it is something that absolutely has to happen. I think it’s vital for the geosciences community.”
About the Author
Dorothy Wright contributes news and feature articles on science, technology, engineering and general interest topics to a variety of publications, including Civil Engineering, Engineering News Record and Bryn Mawr Now.
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