Barbara Ransom, PhD

NSF EarthCube Initiative: DESCC

Barbara Ransom, PhDProgram Director

Marine Geology and Geophysics

National Science Foundation

Directorate for Geosciences

What Is EarthCube?• Transform the conduct of

data-enabled geoscience-related research.

• Create effective community-driven cyberinfrastructure.

• Allow global data discovery and knowledge management.

• Achieve interoperability and data integration across disciplines.

• Transform the conduct of data-enabled geoscience-related research.

• Create effective community-driven cyberinfrastructure.

• Allow global data discovery and knowledge management.

• Achieve interoperability and data integration across disciplines.

Why EarthCube?Nature does not recognize separate disciplines.

EarthCube will democratize access to data. 

EarthCube will increase research time by reducing time needed to find, access, and analyze data.

EarthCube will enable more interdisciplinary research and the pursuit of new questions.

EarthCube will accelerate the pace of discovery.

EarthCube will give all scientists the same chance of  making major contributions regardless of institution  size or institutional endowment.

Atmo‐spheric 

Chemistry

Climate & Large Scale Dynamics

Paleo‐Climate

Meteor‐ology

Aeronomy

Space Weather

Magneto‐spheric Physics

Solar Terrestrial

Igneous Petrology & Volcan‐ology 

Structure & 

Tectonics

Geo Ed & Workforce Training

Geodesy

NCAR

Geophysics & Geody‐namics

Geobiology & Paleoen‐tology

Cryosphere & Ice 

Dynamics

Critical Zone & Soil Science

Chemical Ocean‐ography

Geomor‐phology

Hydrology

Sediment‐ology & Strati‐graphy

Marine Geophysics

Physical Ocean‐ography

Marine Geology

BiologicalOcean‐ography

Ocean Education

Ocean Drilling & Engineer‐

ingSoftware

& Modeling

Bio‐informatics

Ecosystems

Biology

High PerfComputing

Semantics & 

Ontologies

Algorithms & DataMining

EarthCube CIEarthCube CI

Solid and Aqueous Geochem‐

istry

EarthCube:  End‐User Topic Rankings 

The EarthCube VisionThe EarthCube VisionThe EarthCube Vision

Unidata

IRIS IEDA NCAR

OOI

CUASHI

You  have the power to shape what EarthCube will become, if you engage in the process.

Imagine:A world without laptops and WiFi ‐ 22 yrs ago  A world without cell phones – 20 yrs ago  A world without digital cameras ‐ 11 yrs ago A world without GPS ‐ 8 yrs agoA world without iPhones ‐ 5 yrs ago  A world without iPads – 2.5 yrs ago 

Think of how much you depend on these tools!

Imagine:What would your life/science be without them? 

What the next advance will make possible!

Now:Imagine a world with easy, unlimited access to scientific data from any field.

Imagine a world where you can easily plot data of  interest and display it any way you want.

Imagine a world with where you can easily model your results and explore any ideas you have.

What science would you do?

What discoveries would you make?