Conference Agenda

IEDA2 represents a unique collaborative data infrastructure of 3 complementary data systems: EarthChem, LEPR/ traceDs (Library of Experimental Phase Relations), and the System for Earth Sample Registration (SESAR) that jointly support researchers in the Geosciences. IEDA2 helps researchers share and access sample data following the FAIR data principles, and ensures open, reproducible, and transparent science practices. IEDA2 provides a framework for data publication; data synthesis; human- and machine-readable data access that facilitates data mining and computational analysis; and a digital environment that links and integrates physical samples with the modern digital research data ecosystem. The vision for IEDA2 is to advance data-driven and computational methodologies in geochemistry, petrology, and volcanology, and to optimize (re)use and analysis of data, inform peer review, and guide future research directions.

IEDA2 provides services for FAIR geochemical, geochronological, mineralogical, and petrological data with the EarthChem Library (ECL) and FAIR samples with the System for Earth Sample Registration SESAR. ECL and SESAR follow the TRUST principles for repositories, with services for online data submission, data templates, validation of data and metadata completeness, accuracy, and compliance; persistent identification (DOI, IGSN), moratorium periods, human- and machine-readable search and access interfaces, and long-term archiving. With renewed funding from the US NSF, IEDA2 will over the next 5 years focus on enabling user contributions to data synthesis; networking sample data resources; and enhancing usability while educating and engaging the ‘Next Generation’ of users and fostering a culture of collaboration and partnerships in the national and international Geoscience data space.

The Thematic Core Service Multi-scale Laboratories (TCS MSL) is a community within the European Plate Observing System (EPOS) that includes a wide range of world-class laboratory infrastructures and that provides a cross-disciplinary platform for virtual access to data and physical access to solid Earth science labs.

Data coming from the MSL laboratories provide the backbone for scientific publications, but they are often available only as supplementary information to research articles. Moreover, the vast majority of the collected data remain unpublished, inaccessible, and often not sustainably preserved for the long term. To allow reuse of these valuable but often neglected data, the TCS MSL developed a full chain to support solid Earth science researchers from the long tail in the FAIR dissemination of their collected data.

This chain builds upon a community-driven metadata standard that allows for multiple discipline-specific detailed descriptions, a publication tool (metadata editor), and a community portal that gives access to DOI-referenced data publications at multiple research data repositories related to the TCS MSL context (https://epos-msl.uu.nl/). The portal is built on the CKAN repository toolkit and is driven by the richness of the TCS MSL metadata standard. Besides its importance for the TCS MSL community, it also provides a showcase of how to set up a CKAN-based environment as a cross-disciplinary catalogue for FAIR metadata exchange in a highly heterogeneous setting.

Geochemical data have been collected since the 19th century and are essential for geoscientific research as well as contributing to solving societal issues. Typically local or regional questions are solved with single datasets that can be measured in megabytes. However, solving more complex research questions requires many datasets to be compiled into single large ones to find answers through multidimensional analyses, statistics, AI and ML. Compiling such collections to allow computations is often a painstakingly lengthy and manual process.

Coming to an age in which we are dealing with global challenges, only large scale geochemical data collections can contribute to solving these. Projects such as EarthChem and GEOROC have come a long way and continue to set the bar. Whilst these projects have made geochemical data easily findable and accessible, interoperability to other global data systems is still lacking. To make these data truly FAIR, a minimum set of standards and best-practices for data publication need to be agreed on by the global geochemical community. And rather than re-inventing the wheel, we should follow the example of the highly standardized sample and data management strategies of, e.g., IODP cruises, NASA missions, or the seismology and OneGeology communities.

The recently formed OneGeochemistry initiative aims to bring together and ensure that all decisions are made in conference with the international geochemical community. The large international societies will have to play a key role here, their message supported and amplified by funders and national initiatives across the globe.

Creation of data starts with sample collection in the field and the assigning of an unique global IGSN sample identifier to samples, these samples are stored along with any subsequent analytical data in our fine-grained and detailed geochemical data models allowing visualising and publishing acquired datasets. This unique solution has been developed by Lithodat Pty Ltd in conjunction with the AuScope Geochemical Network (AGN) consisting of most Australian geochemical laboratories and can be accessed by the public on the AusGeochem web platform.

Using our field application users can enter and store all sample details on-the-fly during field collection, the data will be stored in the user's private data collection. After running subsequent geochemical analyses those results, including all metadata, can be stored in the relational database and be attached to the sample. Once uploaded, data can be visualised within AusGeochem, using data analytics via technique-specific dashboards and graphs. All data can be shared with collaborators, downloaded in multiple formats and made public enabling FAIR data for the research community.

Having all data stored in a clean and curated relational database with very detailed and fine-grained data models gives researchers free access to large amounts of structured and normalised data, helping them develop new technologies using machine learning and automated data integration in numerical models. Having all data in one place including all metadata such as ORCIDs from involved researchers, funding sources, grant numbers and laboratories enables the quantification and quality assessment of research projects over time.

As part of a major German effort towards a national research data infrastructure, the NFDI4Earth (www.nfdi4earth.de) brings together researchers in the Earth System Sciences, their data, tools, and services to address their digital needs. NFDI4Earth is a community-driven process providing researchers with access to FAIR, coherent, and open ESS data, innovative research data management (RDM) and data science methods. It will do so by developing a central infrastructure that provides access to all ESS data sources, and tools via the OneStop4All to access, connect, visualise and generally research these.

The NFDI4Earth aims from early on for an open communication to and active involvement of the ESS community and the interested public, particularly its participants and interest groups. The structure of the NFDI4Earth was already presented on previous editions of this conference series and will therefore only be briefly summarised. The focus of this talk will be on the developments within the NFDI4Earth, its services and products. A lot has happened since its official start in January 2022, e.g., decisions on the software stacks, consideration of the various use cases, development of the knowledge hub and living handbook, starting of various interest groups, start of 14 pilot projects. Most importantly, we will point out where you can (and hopefully will) engage in the further development of the NFDI4Earth services and products because it is your feedback and participation that will allow us to develop the NFDI4Earth as close to the needs and expectations of the community as possible.