A Formal Geologic Time Modeland its application for harmonizing

heterogeneous geoscience information

Deep-Time Data Workshop, December 14, 2014, San Francisco

Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma

Tetherless World ConstellationRensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Slides:

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(Cohen et al., 2014)

(Walker et al., 2012)

A computer model for geologic time scale

• Two key concepts – Interval: a period of time between two events– Instant: a particular point in time

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We can see Jurassic as an Interval and its start and end time (base and top boundary) each as an Instant

Relevant to the concepts Unit and Boundary in chronostratigraphy

• An ordinal hierarchical structure

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rdin

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hierarchical

Surrounding of the GSSP (Golden Spike) of Turonian Stage at Pueblo, CO, USA (Image source: Google Map)

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Machine-readable encoding:The temporal position of the base of Jurassic

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isc:Jurassic thors:begin isc:BaseJurassic ; thors:end isc:BaseCretaceous

isc:BaseJurassic tm:temporalPosition isc:BaseJurassicTime ; gts:stratotype isc:GSSPBaseJurassic

isc:BaseJurassicTime tm:value "201.3"^^xsd:float ; thors:positionalUncertainty isc:BaseJurassicUncertainty

isc:BaseJurassicUncertainty basic:value "0.2"^^xsd:float

http://resource.geosciml.org/vocabulary/timescale/isc2014.ttl

• The ‘begin instant’ of a ‘interval’ is the ‘end instant’ of the ‘previous contiguous interval’

• So only the begin instant of each interval is needed to be defined, such as isc:BaseJurassic and isc:BaseCretaceous here

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isc:Jurassic gts:rank gts:Period ; skos:broader isc:Mesozoic ; skos:narrower isc:LowerJurassic ; skos:narrower isc:MiddleJurassic ; skos:narrower isc:UpperJurassic

isc:Mesozoic gts:rank gts:Era ; skos:broader isc:Phanerozoic ; skos:narrower isc:Cretaceous ; skos:narrower isc:Jurassic ; skos:narrower isc:Triassic

http://resource.geosciml.org/vocabulary/timescale/isc2014.ttl

Encoding:The hierarchical structure

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isc:BaseJurassic tm:temporalPosition isc:BaseJurassicTime ; gts:stratotype isc:GSSPBaseJurassic

isc:GSSPBaseJurassic sam:shape isc:BaseJurassic-location ; dc:source "Episodes 36/3, p. 162-198, 2013"^^xsd:string ; gts:boundaryLevel "5.80 m above top of Koessen Formation"^^xsd:string isc:BaseJurassic-location gm:position isc:BaseJurassic-position

isc:BaseJurassic-position gm:coordinates "47.4839 11.5306"^^basic:ordinates ; gm:srs <http://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/4326>

http://resource.geosciml.org/vocabulary/timescale/isc2014.ttl

A part of the triples encoding the geographic location of the GSSP of the base of Jurassic

Encoding:The information of each GSSP

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• The International Chronostratigraphic Chart (2014)– 175 geologic time concepts– 65 golden spikes

• Our model of the geologic time scale– 1,1006 triples in the vocabulary– 1,1115 other triples in supporting ontologies/vocabularies– Machine readable– Supports query and reasoning

Model / Vocabulary curation

• Models/Vocabularies for Geologic Time Scale– Collaborators: Simon Cox /CSIRO; Steve Richard /AZGS,

Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma/RPI– Repository: http://resource.geosciml.org/vocabulary/timescale/

• Versions: ISC 2004 – ISC 2014

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See also: CGI Geoscience Terminology Workgroup

OneGeology-Europe

• 20 European nations providing national geologic maps at scale ~1: 1M

• Harmonized geological terms and map legends

• Central portal for data browsing/query among distributed data sources

http://www.onegeology-europe.org

Application in OneGeology-Europe

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Federated query: Result of geologic units with age ‘Cenozoic - from 66 million years to today’

13(Asch et al., 2012)

A Golden Spike Information Portal

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http://geotime.tw.rpi.edu

…

Information sources

“This looks really good!” --Felix Gradstein “Beautiful, and very helpful.” --Marie Aubry “Great help in comparative chronostratigraphy.” --Bill Berggren“A nice contribution!” --Laurie Collins“Awesome resource.” --Mark Leckie … …

Summary

• Vocabulary creation, curation, and application– From the community, by the community and for the community

• eScience and especially Geoinformatics– Send the right information to the right people in the right way– Semantic technologies: A bridge between ‘geo’ and ‘info’ people

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Xiaogang (Marshall) Mamax7@rpi.edu

More informationThanks for listening!

• Backup slides

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Resources of interest

• Cox, S.J.D., Richard, S.M., 2005. A formal model for the geologic time scale and global stratotype section and point, compatible with geospatial information transfer standards. Geosphere 1 (3), 119-137.

• Ma, X., Asch, K., Laxton, J.L., Richard, S.M., Asato, C.G., Carranza, E.J.M., van der Meer, F.D., Wu, C., Duclaux, G., Wakita, K., 2011. Data exchange facilitated. Nature Geoscience 4 (12), 814.

• Ma, X., Carranza, E.J.M., Wu, C., van der Meer, F.D., Liu, G., 2011. A SKOS-based multilingual thesaurus of geological time scale for interoperability of online geological maps. Computers & Geosciences 37 (10), 1602-1615.

• Perrin, M., Mastella, L., Morel, O., Lorenzatti, A., 2011. Geological time formalization: an improved formal model for describing time successions and their correlation. Earth Science Informatics 4 (2), 81-96.

• Ma, X., Carranza, E.J.M., Wu, C., van der Meer, F.D., 2012. Ontology-aided annotation, visualization, and generalization of geological time-scale information from online geological map services. Computers & Geosciences 40, 107-119.

• Ma, X., Fox, P., 2013. Recent progress on geologic time ontologies and considerations for future works. Earth Science Informatics 6 (1), 31-46.

• Cox, S.J.D., Richard, S.M., 2014. A geologic timescale ontology and service. Earth Science Informatics. In Press. DOI: 10.1007/s12145-014-0170-6

• GSSP information source: https://engineering.purdue.edu/Stratigraphy/gssp/index.php • Data visualization library: http://d3js.org/

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Xiaogang (Marshall) Mamax7@rpi.edu

More information

Thanks for listening!

Acknowledgements

• Vocabulary modeling/encoding: Simon Cox/CSIRO, Steve Richard/AZGS

• Demo system: Patrick West/RPI; Linyun Fu/RPI

• User feedback: Mimi Katz/RPI, Simon Cox/CSIRO, Brian Hubber/SI, Laurel Collins/FIU, Felix Gradstein/NHM, Marie Aubry/Rutgers, Lizette Leon Rodriguez/ExxonMobil, Mark Leckie/UMass, Bill Berggren/WHOI

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Golden Spike – background information

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The Last Spike (1881) by Thomas Hill

The "Golden Spike" (also known as "The Last Spike") is the ceremonial final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States, on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.

The Utah state quarter

The original golden spike at the Cantor Arts Museum at Stanford University

Description and images from Wikipedia

• Definition of GSSPs– Conducted by the International Commission on Stratigraphy– Commenced in 1977– As of 2014, 65 of the 101 stages that need a GSSP have

been formally defined

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Classes in the temporal hierarchical ordinal reference system ontology (THORS) (Cox and Richard, 2014)