DYNAMIC DIGITAL GEOSCIENCE FOR A CHANGING WORLD: RECENT EXAMPLES FROM THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

The U.S. Geological Survey is well known for its long-term geosciences data sets encompassing the monitoring of earth processes nationally and globally. Integrating these data to enable three and four-dimensional visualization, earth system modeling, hazard warning and emergency response, and real time on-the-fly analyses is the focus of a number of initiatives at the USGS and the motivating factor for creating the new USGS Core Systems Science Mission Area and the USGS Community for Data Integration in the last few years. Three and four dimensional mapping and modeling by USGS scientists and partners is used to understand temporal changes in landscape attributes, fluxes of material and energy; exploring geologic, structural, chemical, and hydrologic frameworks; spatially modeling ecologic system dynamics; and exploring natural phenomena and social interactions. USGS utilizes on-the-fly mash-ups of diverse data, incorporating multiple inputs from a wide variety of science and non-science sources to provide timely hazard warnings and understand vulnerability and possible impacts. Using complex modeling and statistics USGS is integrating multi-disciplinary data to characterize the global carbon cycle, land use effects on ecosystem services, and impacts of shale gas and other resource development. Finally, the USGS is building a comprehensive service oriented architecture to manage the full data life-cycle from collection to preservation and provide services for integrated analysis, visualization, and accessibility.