EARTH SCIENCE COMPUTATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENT FOR SPACE BASED DATA AND MODELING

Progress in understanding processes underlying Earth's deformation and mass transport requires a non-traditional, integrated, interdisciplinary approach dependent on multiple space and ground based data sets, modeling, and computational tools. Currently, details of geophysical data acquisition, analysis, and modeling largely limit research to discipline domain experts. Future interdisciplinary research requires new computational architecture optimized to perform data processing of multiple data types in a user-friendly environment. We report progress on a web based computational framework with applications for specific data or geophysical modeling tasks, with a focus on space based data sets: InSAR (Interferometric Sythetic Aperture radar), GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment), and GPS (Global Positioning System). The system will include integrated modeling capability for high-resolution deformation and gravity, forward models of viscoelastic mass loading over short wavelengths and complex time histories, forward-inverse codes for characterizing surface loading-response over a range of time scales, and inversion of combined magnetic and gravity fields to constrain deep crustal and mantle properties. The system uses a three-tier architecture, the middle tier server manages user projects, resources, and security, and also enables future scalability. Users log into a web page and have a personal project area, persistently maintained between connections. Upon selection of an application and host from a list of available entities, inputs may be uploaded or constructed from web forms and available data archives. Results are posted via URLs. Interdisciplinary work is supported through availability of all applications via browsers, application tutorials and reference guides, and worked examples. We have demonstration problems including analysis of Gulf Coast subsidence, global ice mass changes, gravity and deformation of a layered spherical earth model due to large earthquakes, and rift setting of Lake Vostok, Antarctica.