CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE INTEGRATED SOLID EARTH SCIENCES (ISES-CI)

The Integrated Solid Earth Science (ISES) effort arose from the Solid Earth Sciences workshop held at the 2002 Geological Society of American meeting. The goal of ISES is to create a common voice for areas of geology that focus on the solid earth, including geochemistry, geochronology, paleontology, petrology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, structural geology, tectonics, and volcanology. An important aspect of this alliance is participation in the CyberInfrastructure and GeoInformatics revolution. The last aspect, which is termed ISES-CI, was the focus of a NSF-funded workshop held in 2003.

The ISES-CI workshop concluded that there is a pressing need to develop databases and analysis and synthesis tools, and to ensure interoperability of ISES datasets and tools in keeping with other disciplinary CI efforts. Ten working areas were identified during the workshop: 1) Geochemistry of Igneous and Sedimentary Rocks, 2) Geochronology and Thermochronology, 3) Geochemistry of Metamorphic Rocks and Metamorphic Petrology, 4) Structural Geology, 5) Physical Properties of Rocks and Minerals, 6) Field Data Acquisition Techniques, 7) Geological and Geophysical Maps, 8) Stratigraphy, 9) Tools for Data Visualization, Integration, and Exploration, and 10) Sample Archiving. These areas will be the focus for further development of such items as scientific databases, easily accessible analysis tools, and seamless integration/access from one dataset to another. All working groups are active, and many have already made significant strides. For example, the geochemistry group has already created a common interface and closely aligned schemas for the main igneous petrology databases. The structural geology group has a workshop scheduled and funded. The maps and samples efforts are also moving toward consensus.