Anna Kelbert, Ph.D.
Oregon State University

NSF’s EarthCube is a relatively new Earth science knowledge integration initiative. It has a grand ambition to develop a common cyberinfrastructure for all of the environmental sciences in the United States. Even though the EarthCube initiative is actively seeking community engagement, it could easily win the prize for the most misinterpreted program in the National Science Foundation. In this talk, I give an overview of the aims and current state of the EarthCube program, and explain why and how, in my opinion, it could well be successful. I then describe my role in a funded EarthCube Building Blocks project, the “Earth System Bridge” (ESB), which intends to provide pathways for communication between existing modeling frameworks.

The early developments of the ESB project insofar as they are of relevance to the CIG community, are focused on providing a controlled vocabulary and a model metadata format that together would allow unambiguous description of numerical models for geodynamics, surface dynamics, seismology, magnetotellurics, and petrology. In addition to the obvious value of providing a comprehensive metadata format, this would also allow for model coupling, e.g., between tectonic and landscape evolution models, thus providing a computational bridge between the CIG and the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS). I provide a progress update on these initial efforts, which I view as a possible CIG entry point into the cyberinfrastructure initiative, allowing us to help shape the outcome of the EarthCube effort. I explain how you could help by providing direct feedback, as well as the procedures for getting involved through the EarthCube governance, and discuss pathways to obtaining EarthCube funding.

[All 2014-15 webinars] [YouTube]

1. Kelbert
2. webinar
3. 2014