Fall AGU 2004 Announcement
GERM-Related Sessions

There will be three events at the Fall AGU 2004 that relate to GERM activities:

1. GERM will sponsor the beer at the VGP reception. Please come, celebrate the VGP awardees and talk to us about our planning of the next GERM meeting at Lamont in 2005!
2. An Union session on The Deep Earth Engine: Geophysics and Geochemistry (U04). This will be a very exciting session that explores the interface between GERM and CSEDI, a multidisciplinary approach to the Deep Earth Sciences.
3. A joint VGP/SF session on Cyberinfrastructure in Geochemistry (SF13). Establishing a cyberinfrastructure in geochemistry is very challenging and requires cooperation within the overall scientific community, with database operators, and with editors and publishers. GERM has a long history of improving the Geochemistry science infrastructure, and we would like to ask the GERM community to contribute to this session.

Please consider contributing to these sessions! If you have questions, please contact the conveners!

U04 The Deep Earth Engine: Geophysics and Geochemistry

The present-day state and dynamics of the Earth's deep interior provide the key to understanding the forces driving geology, and reveal the connections between the surface environment and the interior. A full characterization of the deep Earth engine is thus a prerequisite for our ultimate goal of understanding Earth circulation as a whole. This understanding can emerge from focused efforts including studies of the pattern of large-scale flow in the mantle, the composition and structure of the mantle, and the operation of the geodynamo, and from interdisciplinary studies that integrate observations and models from a variety of sources. This interdisciplinary session will bring together seismologists, geodynamicists, geomagnetists, mineral physicists, petrologists, and geochemists to explore global and regional aspects of the internal structure of the Earth's interior. A variety of international efforts and programs have emerged in the past decade to promote deep earth research; this session will highlight the successes of these efforts and the future challenges involved in understanding the deep earth engine.

Conveners

William F McDonough, University of Maryland, USA
Louise Kellogg, University of California at Davis, USA
Bernie Wood, University of Bristol, UK
Barbara Romanowicz , University of California at Berkeley, USA
Uli Christensen , Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie, Germany

SF13 Cyberinfrastructure in Geochemistry

Geochemistry has broad significance across the planetary sciences. However, such breadth requires a coherent and unifying set of concepts and principles to organize and present empirical data in a way that it can be used effectively by the broader geoscience community. A clear scientific vision, combined with a flexible information technology (IT) structure, will accelerate the rate of discovery and expand the breadth of impact of geochemical results in other disciplines. This session will focus on demonstrations of the utility and capabilities of existing and developing geochemical cyberinfrastructure efforts. Specifically, the session will address such issues as:

• Science advances fostered by modern computation and visualization techniques for large datasets • Expansion of existing datasets to better serve the needs of the geoscience community • Identification of practical solutions and approaches that will help overcome the obstacles related to the interoperability of various existing and new databases within geochemistry and related fields, such as geochronology, paleomagnetics and the biogeosciences • Proposed scientific data models to capture, archive and present the wide variety of geochemical data • Development of innovative and user-friendly data population mechanisms • Definition of standardized data collections and models for possible geochemical data federations • Community approaches to metadata and data interoperability protocols, standards and interfaces that will enable more effective and enduring data integration within geochemistry, as well as between geochemistry and other disciplines.

Conveners

Anthony A.P. Koppers, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA
Rick Carlson, Carnegie Institution, USA
Steve L. Goldstein, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, USA
John Helly, San Diego Supercomputer Center, USA
Kerstin Lehnert, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, USA
Hubert Staudigel, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA