How GEOSS IP3 explores and enables interdisciplinary science

Earth scientists are engaged in integrating knowledge stemming from different disciplines concerned with the constituent parts of the complex Earth system. The goal is to understand Earth's properties as a whole and thereby deliver benefits to society. The scope and complexity of Earth system investigations demand the formation of distributed, multidisciplinary collaborative teams, which presents both scientific and technological challenges. The information systems used by the different disciplines are characterized by heterogeneous and distributed data and metadata models, different semantics and expertise, diverse protocols and interfaces, and different data policies and security levels. We describe how the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) infrastructure facilitates the formation of these distributed, multidisciplinary and collaborative teams. Initiated in 2005 by the GEO Architecture and Data Committee, the GEOSS Interoperability Process Pilot Project (IP3) is a medium for reaching interoperability between disparate components contributed to GEOSS from multi-disciplinary Earth and Space Science communities. In 2007 one of IP3's key successes was an end-to-end demonstration that combined biological species data, accessed through the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) contribution to GEOSS, and climate model output data, part of the WMO's Information System's contribution to GEOSS, accessed through NCAR, and seamlessly fed the data stream into an ecological niche model (ENM). The ENM runs in an open modeling framework to produce a new product displaying the impacts of climate change on the geographic distribution of selected