Earth Science Domain Research Articles

DEVELOPING A CLOUD-BASED ONLINE GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION SHARING AND GEOPROCESSING PLATFORM TO FACILITATE COLLABORATIVE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

Efficient online discovering and applying geospatial information resources (GIRs) is critical in Earth Science domain as while for cross-disciplinary applications. However, to achieve it is challenging due to the heterogeneity, complexity and privacy of online GIRs. In this article, GeoSquare, a collaborative online geospatial information sharing and geoprocessing platform, was developed to tackle this problem. Specifically, (1) GIRs registration and multi-view query functions allow users to publish and discover GIRs more effectively. (2) Online geoprocessing and real-time execution status checking help users process data and conduct analysis without pre-installation of cumbersome professional tools on their own machines. (3) A service chain orchestration function enables domain experts to contribute and share their domain knowledge with community members through workflow modeling. (4) User inventory management allows registered users to collect and manage their own GIRs, monitor their execution status, and track their own geoprocessing histories. Besides, to enhance the flexibility and capacity of GeoSquare, distributed storage and cloud computing technologies are employed. To support interactive teaching and training, GeoSquare adopts the rich internet application (RIA) technology to create user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI). Results show that GeoSquare can integrate and foster collaboration between dispersed GIRs, computing resources and people. Subsequently, educators and researchers can share and exchange resources in an efficient and harmonious way.

Implementation of Geospatial Data Provenance in a Web Service Workflow Environment With ISO 19115 and ISO 19115-2 Lineage Model

Data provenance, also called data lineage, records the derivation history of a data product. In the earth science domain, geospatial data provenance is important because it plays a significant role in data quality and usability evaluation, data trail audition, workflow replication, and product reproducibility. The generation of the geospatial provenance metadata is usually coupled with the execution of geo-processing workflow. Their symbiotic relationship makes them complementary to each other and promises great benefit once they are integrated. However, the heterogeneity of data and computing resources in the distributed environment constructed under the service-oriented architecture (SOA) brings a great challenge to resource integration. Specifically, the issues, such as the lack of interoperability and compatibility among provenance metadata models and between provenance and workflow, create obstacles for the integration of provenance, and geo-processing workflow. In order to tackle these issues, on one hand, this paper breaks the provenance heterogeneity through recording provenance information in a standard lineage model defined in ISO 19115:2003 and ISO 19115-2:2009 standards. On the other hand, this paper bridges the gap between provenance and geo-processing workflow through extending both workflow language and service interface, making it possible for the automatic capture of provenance information in the geospatial web service environment. The proposed method is implemented in the GeoBrain, a SOA-based geospatial web service system. The testing result from implementation shows that the geospatial provenance information is successfully captured throughout the life cycle of geo-processing workflows and properly recorded in the ISO standard lineage model.

Four Things You Can Do To Extend the Impact, Reach, and Longevity of Your Research Data

Four Things You Can Do To Extend the Impact, Reach, and Longevity of Your Research Data

Policy for robust space-based earth science, technology and applications

Satellite remote sensing technology has contributed to the transformation of multiple earth science domains, putting space observations at the forefront of innovation in earth science. With new satellite missions being launched every year, new types of earth science data are being incorporated into science models and decision-making systems in a broad array of organizations. Policy guidance can influence the degree to which user needs influence mission design and when, and ensure that satellite missions serve both the scientific and user communities without becoming unfocused and overly expensive. By considering the needs of the user community early on in the mission-design process, agencies can ensure that satellites meet the needs of multiple constituencies. This paper describes the mission development process in NASA and ESA and compares and contrasts the successes and challenges faced by these agencies as they try to balance science and applications within their missions.

BICAR: a new algorithm for multiresolution spatiotemporal data fusion.

We introduce a method for spatiotemporal data fusion and demonstrate its performance on three constructed data sets: one entirely simulated, one with temporal speech signals and simulated spatial images, and another with recorded music time series and astronomical images defining the spatial patterns. Each case study is constructed to present specific challenges to test the method and demonstrate its capabilities. Our algorithm, BICAR (Bidirectional Independent Component Averaged Representation), is based on independent component analysis (ICA) and extracts pairs of temporal and spatial sources from two data matrices with arbitrarily different spatiotemporal resolution. We pair the temporal and spatial sources using a physical transfer function that connects the dynamics of the two. BICAR produces a hierarchy of sources ranked according to reproducibility; we show that sources which are more reproducible are more similar to true (known) sources. BICAR is robust to added noise, even in a “worst case” scenario where all physical sources are equally noisy. BICAR is also relatively robust to misspecification of the transfer function. BICAR holds promise as a useful data-driven assimilation method in neuroscience, earth science, astronomy, and other signal processing domains.

Chinese and Australian Year 3 Children's Conceptual Understanding of Science: A multiple comparative case study

Children have formal science instruction from kindergarten in Australia and from Year 3 in China. The purpose of this research was to explore the impact that different approaches to primary science curricula in China and Australia have on children's conceptual understanding of science. Participants were Year 3 children from three schools of high, medium and low socio-economic status in Hunan Province, central south China (n = 135) and three schools of similar socio-economic status in Western Australia (n = 120). The students' understanding was assessed by a science quiz, developed from past Trends in Mathematics and Science Study science released items for primary children. In-depth interviews were carried out to further explore children's conceptual understanding of living things, the Earth and floating and sinking. The results revealed that Year 3 children from schools of similar socio-economic status in the two countries had similar conceptual understandings of life science, earth science and physical science. Further, in both countries, the higher the socio-economic status of the school, the better the students performed on the science quiz and in interviews. Some idiosyncratic strengths and weaknesses were observed, for example, Chinese Year 3 children showed relative strength in classification of living things, and Australian Year 3 children demonstrated better understanding of floating and sinking, but children in both countries were weak in applying and reasoning with complex concepts in the domain of earth science. The results raise questions about the value of providing a science curriculum in early childhood if it does not make any difference to students' conceptual understanding of science.

Science Data Infrastructure for Preservation - Earth Science

The proper preservation of both current and historical scientific data will underpin a multitude of ecological, economic and political decisions in the future of our society. The SCIDIP-ES project addresses the long-term persistent storage, access and management needs of scientific data by providing preservation infrastructure services. Taking exemplars from the Earth Science domain we highlight the key preservation challenges and barriers to be overcome by the SCIDIP-ES infrastructure. SCIDIP-ES augments existing science data e-infrastructures by adding specific services and toolkits, which implement core preservation concepts, thus guaranteeing the long-term access to data assets across and beyond their designated communities.

Hierarchical Fault Diagnosis and Fuzzy Rule-Based Reasoning for Satellites Formation Flight

Formation flying is an emerging area in the Earth and space science and technology domains that utilize multiple inexpensive spacecraft by distributing the functionalities of a single platform spacecraft among miniature inexpensive platforms. Traditional spacecraft fault diagnosis and health monitoring practices involve around-the-clock monitoring, threshold checking, and trend analysis of a large amount of telemetry data by human experts that do not scale well for multiple space platforms. A novel hierarchical fault diagnosis framework and methodology is presented here that enables a systematic utilization of fuzzy rule-based reasoning to enhance the level of autonomy achievable in fault diagnosis at ground stations. Fuzzy rule-based fault diagnosis schemes for satellite formation flight are developed and investigated at different levels in the hierarchy for a leader-follower architecture. Our formation level fault diagnosis is found to be useful as a supervisory diagnosis scheme that can prompt the operators to have a closer look at the potential faulty components to determine the sources of a fault. Effectiveness of our proposed fault diagnosis methodology is demonstrated by utilizing synthetic formation flying data of five satellites that are configured in the leader-follower architecture, and are subjected to nonabrupt intermittent faults in the attitude control subsystem (ACS) and the electrical power subsystem (EPS) of the follower satellites.

A Study on Problems and Solutions for Developing Science Field Study of School Education : An Earth Science Domain as an Example

A Study on Problems and Solutions for Developing Science Field Study of School Education : An Earth Science Domain as an Example

Characteristics of abductive inquiry in earth science: An undergraduate case study

AbstractThe goal of this case study was to describe characteristic features of abductive inquiry learning activities in the domain of earth science. Participants were undergraduate junior and senior students who were enrolled in an earth science education course offered for preservice secondary science teachers at a university in Korea. The undergraduate students conducted, as a course activity, earth scientific inquiry according to the Abductive Inquiry Model (AIM) to explain a typhoon's anomalous path. Data sources included students' presentation materials, written reports, and interviews with five selected participants. The data were analyzed qualitatively in collaboration with a practicing earth scientist. The findings of the study revealed the characteristics of students' inquiry performance in each phase of the AIM. During the exploration phase, the students investigated earth scientific phenomena with provided data and transformed the data into new forms to discover problems to be explained abductively. In the examination phase, the students activated and expanded their background knowledge to find appropriate rules for abductive inference. Furthermore, they created new rules, which contained hypothetical explanations for the phenomena in question. The selection phase provided the students with opportunities to evaluate their hypotheses with empirical and theoretical criteria and choose more plausible ones. Finally, in the explanation phase, the students provided genetic and narrative explanations using the hypotheses selected previously. Implications for science inquiry learning as well as relevant research were suggested. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 95: 409–430, 2011

The data access layer in the GRelC system architecture

Grid computing is a well-known technology to share resources such as high-performance computers, sensors, observation devices, data and databases across dynamic and multi-institutional Virtual Organizations (VOs). The complexity of data management in a grid environment comes from the distribution, scale, growing rate, heterogeneity, dynamicity of data sources. The data grid layer (grid data management system) in the overall grid computing software stack must provide a complete support in terms of access, integration, replication, monitoring, mining, management of data sources in a grid environment. The main goal of this work is to present the data access layer of the GRelC system architecture discussing in detail the vision, the main challenges, the internal architecture, the security framework and a real test case in the Earth Science and Environmental domains.

Data sonification of volcano seismograms and Sound/Timbre reconstruction of ancient musical instruments with Grid infrastructures

Abstract Recently, the scenario of international collaboration in scientific research has swiftly evolved with the gradual but impressive deployment of high bandwidth networks and Grid infrastructures towards what is currently called e-Science. So far, several scientific domains, such as Life Sciences, High Energy Physics, Computational Chemistry, Earth Science, etc. are benefiting of e-Infrastructures to tackle new global challenges, particularly those that have high societal and economic impact, with a truly multidisciplinary approach. Much less has been done, however, in the field of Humanities. In this paper we present some use cases of how the EU funded e-Infrastructures have been used to support both the Cultural Heritage community in reconstructing the sound of ancient musical instruments and the scientists belonging to the Earth Science domain to better understand the behavior of volcanoes close to eruptions translating the patterns of volcanic seismograms into a set of hearable sound waves.

A Next Gen Interface for Embodied Learning

Emerging research from the learning sciences and human-computer interaction supports the premise that learning is effective when it is embodied, collaborative, and multimodal. In response, we have developed a mixed-reality environment called the Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Laboratory (SMALLab). SMALLab enables multiple students to interact with one another and digitally mediated elements via 3D movements and gestures in real physical space. It uses 3D object tracking, real time graphics, and surround-sound to enhance learning. We present two studies from the earth science domain that address questions regarding the feasibility and efficacy of SMALLab in a classroom context. We present data demonstrating that students learn more during a recent SMALLab intervention compared to regular classroom instruction. We contend that well-designed, mixed-reality environments have much to offer STEM learners, and that the learning gains transcend those that can be expected from more traditional classroom procedures.

Do young children’s ideas about the Earth’s structure and processes reveal underlying patterns of descriptive and causal understanding in earth science?

This paper begins with a discussion regarding the nature and complexity of understanding in the conceptually confined domain of earth science, here limited to its ‘geological’ aspects. There then follows a report on a study of how the ideas about a range of concepts relating to the Earth’s structure and processes held by individual children from Key Stage 2 (7–11 years) in one primary school in north‐east England reveal hierarchical levels of descriptive and causal understanding. Such patterns, described here as alternative frameworks, can be used to inform our understanding of young children’s learning in earth science and, unless taken into consideration, represent an additional ‘critical barrier’ to learning in this domain to those previously identified by research. Implications of these findings for further research and for classroom practice are addressed.

과학 글쓰기에 나타난 창의적 사고기능의 유형 분석 - 중학교 과학교과서를 중심으로 -

Writing is the process of representing own experience, though, feeling as the meaning of the fixed form or organizing by creating new meanings systematically. Therefore, writing is the thinking process with complex forms and the creative thinking ability requiring thft prohlftm-solving process. This study is to investigate ’what types of the writing activities there are’ and ’how frequent the writing activities are presented’ applying the creative thinking ability in the middle-school science textbooks. We analyze the writing activities in the 24 middle-school science textbooks in the 7th National Curriculum. To study, we used the types of writing activities for improving creativity presented in the writing education as the criterion. Because there are few studies on the science writing in Korea. Based upon the findings of the study, we could find many types of writing activities using creative thinking ability in science textbooks. The writing activities are suggested in D science textbook the most. And also, the writing activities applying originality elements are presented the most of the creative thinking ability. As the specific types of writing, it is frequent to write using ’the things I have known, the things I want to know, the things I became to know’ (the elaborateness) similar to the reports. There are many writings in the domain of earth science. And also, the lower grade the students are, the more writings there are.

Effects of Computer-Based Role-Playing on Decision Making Skills

The development of higher-order cognitive skills such as decision making is a critical component of science education. Two studies assess decisionmaking skills using common cognitive errors and evaluate the impact of computer-based laboratories on the development of these skills. The first establishes the prevalence of cognitive errors among high school students, undergraduates, and Earth Science professionals. The second examines the role of computer-aided instruction in the Earth Science domain on subsequent decision making. High school students took part in either a computer or equivalent paper-and-pencil role-playing exercise requiring students to evaluate the possible eruption of a volcano. Students who used the computer exercise made more consistent decisions than those who used the traditional paper-and-pencil exercise, suggesting that well designed computer-based laboratories can positively impact higher-order cognitive skills.