UNAVCO/GEON (GEOsciences Network; http://www.geongrid.org/), an NSF-funded Large-Scale Information Technology Research (ITR) project, founded to address some of those issues, is developing a distributed, services-based system that enables earth scientists to publish, share, integrate, analyze, and visualize their data. (The LEAD [Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery] http://lead.ou.edu/) is pursuing similar goals for the atmospheric community.)
GEON is prototyping an Earth Sciences research environment in which advanced information technologies facilitate collaborative, inter-disciplinary science efforts can tackle integrative problems such as those in the new EarthScope project. In the GEON environment, scientists and educators are able to publish and/or discover data, tools, and models using Web/Grid services accessed via portals using advanced, semantic-based search engines and query tools. Scientific workflows consisting of Web/Grid services are executed in a distributed environment, and advanced Geographical Information Systems (GIS) mapping, 3D and 4D visualization tools allow scientists to interact with data and models.
The core GEON Grid-based architecture is being developed at the San Diego Supercomputing Center in coordination with a number of participants including domain science co-investigators and associated partner organizations. In Boulder, scientists and students at UNAVCO, DLESE/UCAR, and the University of Colorado are participating in a GEON study of the dynamics, structure, and Cenozoic evolution of the Rocky Mountains. They are also contributing to the development of IT components. In coordination with Unidata, UNAVCO is modifying a version of the powerful Interactive Data Visualization (IDV) software to meet Earth Science-specific visualization needs such as plotting earthquake locations and focal mechanisms, strain-rate axes, mantle anisotropy, and GPS velocity vectors. Three-dimensional mantle seismic tomography, time-dependent geodynamic models, and other data are being converted to netCDF and hosted on the UNAVCO/GEON Grid Point-of-Presence (PoP) computer node. These data and models can be easily accessed via OPeNDAP, viewed and manipulated with the IDV, and shared with colleagues providing an unprecedented ability to explore earth processes.
C. Meertens, UNAVCO, 19 November 2004