IN23E-03
Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Geochronology as a Collaborative Endeavor: A Decade of Progress, A Decade of Plans
Tuesday, 15 December 2015: 14:10
2020 (Moscone West)
James F Bowring1, Noah Morgan McLean2, J. Douglas Walker2, George E Gehrels3, Kenneth Howard Rubin4, Andrea Dutton5, Samuel A Bowring6 and Matthew E Rioux7, (1)College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, United States, (2)University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States, (3)University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States, (4)University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, United States, (5)University of Florida, Department of Geological Sciences, Ft Walton Beach, FL, United States, (6)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, (7)University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
Abstract:
The Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES.org) has worked collaboratively for the last decade with geochronologists from EARTHTIME and EarthChem to build cyberinfrastructure geared to ensuring transparency and reproducibility in geoscience workflows and is engaged in refining and extending that work to serve additional geochronology domains during the next decade. ET_Redux (formerly U-Pb_Redux) is a free open-source software system that provides end-to-end support for the analysis of U-Pb geochronological data. The system reduces raw mass spectrometer (TIMS and LA-ICPMS) data to U-Pb dates, allows users to interpret ages from these data, and then facilitates the seamless federation of the results from one or more labs into a community web-accessible database using standard and open techniques. This EarthChem database – GeoChron.org – depends on keyed references to the System for Earth Sample Registration (SESAR) database that stores metadata about registered samples. These keys are each a unique International Geo Sample Number (IGSN) assigned to a sample and to its derivatives. ET_Redux provides for interaction with this archive, allowing analysts to store, maintain, retrieve, and share their data and analytical results electronically with whomever they choose. This initiative has created an open standard for the data elements of a complete reduction and analysis of U-Pb data, and is currently working to complete the same for U-series geochronology. We have demonstrated the utility of interdisciplinary collaboration between computer scientists and geoscientists in achieving a working and useful system that provides transparency and supports reproducibility, allowing geochemists to focus on their specialties. The software engineering community also benefits by acquiring research opportunities to improve development process methodologies used in the design, implementation, and sustainability of domain-specific software.
