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September Gsat 03 2011 Annual Meeting & Exposition poster included with this issue! VOL. 20, No. 12 A PUBLICATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA DECEMBER 2010 Geoinformatics: Transforming data to knowledge for geosciences Inside: ▲ Call for Proposals: 2011 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting & Exposition, p. 12 ▲ Penrose Conference Report: Origin and Uplift of the Sierra Nevada, California,USA, p. 18 ▲ First Announcement and Call for Papers: 2011 GSA South-Central Section Meeting, p. 24 ▲ Second Announcement: 2011 Joint Meeting of GSA’s North-Central and Northeastern Sections, p. 26 VOLUME 20, NUMBER 12 ▲ DECEMBER 2010 SCIENCE ARTICLE GSA TODAY publishes news and information for more than 22,000 GSA members and subscribing libraries. GSA TODAY 4 Geoinformatics: Transforming data to (ISSN 1052-5173 USPS 0456-530) is published 11 times per year, monthly, with a combined April/May issue, by The knowledge for geosciences Geological Society of America®, Inc., with offices at 3300 A. Krishna Sinha, Zaki Malik, Abdelmou- Penrose Place, Boulder, Colorado. Mailing address: P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA. Periodicals postage paid naam Rezgui, Calvin G. Barnes, Kai Lin, at Boulder, Colorado, and at additional mailing offices. Grant Heiken, William A. Thomas, Linda C. Postmaster: Send address changes to GSA Today, GSA Sales and Service, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, Gundersen, Robert Raskin, Ian Jackson, USA. GSA provides this and other forums for the presentation Peter Fox, Deborah McGuinness, Dogan of diverse opinions and positions by scientists worldwide, Seber, and Herman Zimmerman regardless of their race, citizenship, gender, religion, or political viewpoint. Opinions presented in this publication do not reflect official positions of the Society. Cover: Earth image courtesy NASA. See “Geoinformatics: Transforming data to knowledge for geosciences”, p. 4–10. Copyright © 2010, The Geological Society of America (GSA). All rights reserved. Copyright not claimed on content prepared wholly by U.S. government employees within the scope of their employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further requests to GSA, to use a single figure, a single table, and/or a brief paragraph of text in other subsequent works and to make unlimited photocopies of 12 2011 Geological Society of America items in this journal for noncommercial use in classrooms to Call for Proposals: further education and science. For any other use, contact Annual Meeting & Exposition Permissions, GSA, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA; fax +1-303-357-1073, [email protected]. 14 GSA Division Awards: Call for Nominations SUBSCRIPTIONS: GSA members: Contact GSA Sales and Service at +1-888-443-4472, +1-303-357-1000, option 3, or [email protected] for information. Nonmembers 15 GSA Award, Recognition & Grant Deadlines & Institutions: Free with paid subscription to GSA Bulletin, Geology, Lithosphere, and Geosphere (all four); otherwise US$70. Contact AIP Customer Service, [email protected]. Claims: 16 National Awards For nonreceipt or for damaged copies, GSA members should contact GSA Sales and Service; all others contact AIP Customer Service, [email protected]. Claims are honored for one 17 GSA Mentor Programs year; please allow sufficient delivery time for overseas copies, up to six months. 17 2011 GSA Section Meeting Schedule GSA TODAY STAFF: Executive Director and Publisher: John W. Hess Science Editors: David E. Fastovsky, Dept. of Geosciences, 18 Penrose Conference Report: Origin and Uplift of the University of Rhode Island, Woodward Hall, Rm. 317, Sierra Nevada, California Kingston, Rhode Island 02881, USA, [email protected]; Bernard Housen, Geology Dept. (ES 425) and Advanced Materials Science and Engineering Center (AMSEC), 24 First Announcement and Call for Papers: 2011 South-Central Western Washington University, 516 High Street, Bellingham, Washington 98225-9080, USA, [email protected]. Section Meeting Managing Editor: K.E.A. Giles, [email protected], [email protected]. Graphics Production: Margo Y. Sajban 26 Second Announcement: 2011 Joint Meeting of GSA’s North-Central Interns: Stephen Craft, April Zemyan. and Northeastern Sections ADVERTISING: Classifieds & Display: Ann Crawford, +1-800-472-1988, 29 Call for Applications: 2011–2012 GSA-USGS Congressional ext. 1053, +1-303-357-1053, Fax +1-303-357-1070; [email protected] Science Fellowship GSA ONLINE: www.geosociety.org 30 GSA Foundation Update Printed in the USA using pure soy inks. 31 Classified Advertising Geoinformatics: Transforming data to knowledge for geosciences A. Krishna Sinha*, Dept. of Geosciences, Virginia Tech, Blacks- logbooks, and visualized them through interpretive products, burg, Virginia 24061, USA; Zaki Malik, Dept. of Computer such as maps and cross sections. We continue to conduct our Science, Wayne State Univ., Detroit, Michigan 48120, USA; science in similar ways. We make observations on the ground Abdelmounaam Rezgui, School of Information Sciences, Univ. and through remote sensing techniques and store the informa- of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA; Calvin G. tion in computers, but we still find it difficult to achieve an in- Barnes, Dept. of Geosciences, Texas Tech Univ., Lubbock, Texas tegrative understanding of complex natural phenomena. The 79409, USA; Kai Lin, San Diego Supercomputer Center, Univ. ability to find, access, integrate, and properly interpret data sets of California, San Diego, California 92093, USA; Grant Heiken, has been hampered by the expanding volumes and heteroge- 331 Windantide Place, Freeland, Washington 98249, USA; neity of the data. With the help of computer scientists, transfor- William A. Thomas, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences, mative advances in the geosciences are now possible through Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506, USA; Linda C. innovative approaches to interoperability, analysis, modeling, Gundersen, U.S. Geological Survey, National Center, Reston, and integration of heterogeneous databases. This geoinformat- Virginia 20192, USA; Robert Raskin, NASA Jet Propulsion Labo- ics effort would require Web-based availability of data and ap- ratory, 300-320, Pasadena, California 91109, USA; Ian Jackson, plications, thereby removing geographic or political boundaries. British Geological Survey, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK; Peter Geoinformatics will give us the ability to encompass a variety Fox, Deborah McGuinness, Dept. of Computer Sciences, RPI, of temporal and spatial scales, integrate heterogeneous data, Troy, New York 12180, USA; Dogan Seber**, San Diego Super- and visualize data and analytical results. computer Center, Univ. of California, San Diego, California 92093, USA; and Herman Zimmerman, National Science WHAT IS GEOINFORMATICS? Foundation (ret.), 1337 NE Stanton Street, Portland, Oregon Geoinformatics is an informatics framework for the discov- 97212, USA ery of new knowledge through integration and analysis of earth-science data and applications. Fostered by support from both national and international agencies, geoinformatics has ABSTRACT emerged to address the growing recognition that problems An integrative view of Earth as a system, based on multi- with significant societal implications require integrative and in- disciplinary data, has become one of the most compelling rea- novative approaches for analysis, modeling, managing, and sons for research and education in the geosciences. It is now archiving of extensive and diverse data sets. In the United necessary to establish a modern infrastructure that can support States, geoinformatics emerged as an initiative within the Nation- the transformation of data to knowledge. Such an information al Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences and infrastructure for geosciences is contained within the emerging other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Geological Survey science of geoinformatics, which seeks to promote the utiliza- (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration tion and integration of complex, multidisciplinary data in seek- (NASA). The impetus was the wide consensus that existing in- ing solutions to geoscience-based societal challenges. formation management infrastructures were inadequate to cope with the complexities of earth processes. INTRODUCTION Foundation technologies constitute the base infrastructure Over the centuries that humankind has been studying Earth, required to facilitate geoinformatics. These technologies include oceans, and sky, data were gathered toward explaining the resources for communication, storage, and computation. physical phenomena of our surroundings. Understanding such Consequently, geoscientists are now better equipped (e.g., high- events as eclipses, tides, volcanism, and earthquakes was chal- performance computing) to efficiently address complex ques- lenging because of the difficulty of organizing observations tions. However, the true potential of these technologies can only within scientific frameworks that could provide an integrative be realized by enhancing our data- and application-management understanding of these phenomena. Pioneers of the earth sci- capabilities (shown as the geoinformatics components in Fig. 1). ences, such as geologists Lyell (1797–1875) and Hutton (1726– For instance, standards are needed for the exchange and under- 1797), made multidisciplinary observations in stratigraphy, standing of data (e.g., shared data models, markup languages, paleontology, and petrology, stored their observations
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