Thursday, November 15, 2012

Upcoming Sediment Experimentalists Activities, December 2012

Dear Sediment Experimentalists,

We have set up several activities in December related to Earth surface experiments. We will make as much information available as possible online for those who cannot attend in person. Please contact us with any questions or comments at sedimentexp@gmail.com. Hope to see you in December! 

(1) AGU Town Hall
(2) AGU Sessions
(3) Experimental Stratigraphy Workshop
(4) New webpage

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(1) AGU Town Hall
7 Dec 2012 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Moscone West - Room 2007

This town hall follows up on last year's community discussion on surface processes, and focuses more directly on experiments andexperimental data and practices. Panelists include James Syvitski, Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, Aaron Packman, Rick Hooper, Paul Cutler, and Alex Densmore. We will focus on learning from and linking with existing initiatives, and involving journal editors in our discussion. Come participate in the community discussion on how to best share our knowledge. Lunch is provided. 

(2) AGU Sessions

Friday, December 7
EP51D. Advances in Experimental Earth Surface Processes I
8:00 AM - 10:00 AM; 2008 (Moscone West)

EP53A. Advances in Experimental Earth Surface Processes II Posters
1:40 PM - 6:00 PM; Hall A-C (Moscone South)

See the AGU 2012 Fall Meeting Scientific Program for more information

2012 December 11-12, University of Texas, Austin

This workshop will bring together on-site and virtual participants with expertise from experimentalists, modelers, and field geologists in the fields of Earth surface processes, geomorphology, and stratigraphy.

In the coming weeks we will post information on the workshop webpage on how to participate online and view the experiment in the STEP basin, watch the talks, and participate in the discussion. Discussion from the workshop will be documented and shared with the NSF EarthCube effort, so we greatly appreciate all of your comments and participation.

We've collected all of our information for you on a new webpage. Let us know if you have any suggestions, especially on the Links page.

Happy experimenting,
sedimentexp@gmail.com

Leslie Hsu
Wonsuck Kim
Raleigh Martin
Brandon McElroy

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Experimental Stratigraphy Workshop, December 11-12, at UT Austin

We are excited to announce a workshop on Experimental Stratigraphy that will take place on December 11-12 at the University of Texas, Austin campus.

The primary goals of the workshop are
  1. to convene participants to consider grand challenges in morphodynamics, geomorphology, and stratigraphy that can be addressed using physical experiments;
  2. to identify user requirements to achieve the grand challenges in terms of accessing experimental data and advanced experimental technologies;
  3. to generate, develop, and frame innovative ideas on community standards for data and metadata related to sediment experiments; and
  4. to identify needs and explore solutions for data storage and also cyberinfrastructure needs for data dissemination.

The workshop will include a live experiment in the University of Texas Sediment Transport and Earth-surface Processes (STEP) basin.

Invited Speakers include Gary Parker, Ron Steel, Tetsuji Muto, David Mohrig, and François Métivier.

People will be able to participate in person on-site or virtually through webinars.

Breakout group discussions will contribute to a document of user needs for the U.S. NSF EarthCube effort.

Please see the attached flyer for more information.

To register, contact the organizing committee at sedimentexp@gmail.com.

Cheers,
Wonsuck Kim
Leslie Hsu
Brandon McElroy
Raleigh Martin

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Summer Update for the Sediment Experimentalists

Dear all,

Hope you are all having a great summer. To continue our Sediment Experimentalist community-building, here are two ways you can get to know more experimentalists. 

(1) Contribute to our AGU Session: EP002 Advances in Experimental Earth Surface Processes
(2) Put your laboratory on the Map!


(1) Contribute to our AGU Session: EP002 Advances in Experimental Earth Surface Processes

If you are attending the AGU Fall meeting, please participate in our session by submitting an abstract! We hope to be able to meet many of you there. 

In addition to highlighting exciting new physical experiments and methods, we will use this session will spur community conversations about collecting, sharing, and archiving experimental data and tools, and building collaborations between experimentalists, modelers, and theoreticians. 

Invited Speakers:
Leonard Sklar (San Francisco State University)
Stephen DeLong (Biosphere 2)
Jorge Abad (University of Pittsburgh)
Alessandro Cantelli (Shell Oil)

Description:
Physical experiments designed to clarify mechanisms and rates of Earth's surface evolution have contributed much to our understanding of Earth science. By highlighting recent progress, including new methods and techniques, we seek to create a venue to coalesce the community around current opportunities to share and develop resources for experimental science. Presentations and posters are sought from the wide range of surface process experiments where material transport plays a central role, especially those that integrate new and old datasets, use novel techniques for observations and data collection, develop reusable tools to analyze or share large datasets, or require cross-disciplinary communication.

(2) Put your laboratory on the Map!


Our Google Fusion Table is growing, but we want to see where other laboratory experiments are in progress. In particular, how about adding some non-U.S. facilities?



(Click map above for Google Map view)

The Fusion table was put together not only to list completed datasets, but also to serve as a resource for discovering other experiments and experimentalists. We encourage you to add an entry that briefly describes your lab or work in progress. You can read the Instructions for contributing or simply email sedimentexp@gmail.com or any one of us to help.

Another resource that you may want to know about and contribute to is Open Sediment Science, which maintains a list of Experimental Facilities for Geomorphology!
https://morpho.ipgp.fr/OSS/Facilities

Happy experimenting,
Leslie Hsu
Wonsuck Kim
Brandon McElroy
Raleigh Martin

Archived messages:
http://sedimentexperiments.blogspot.com/

Friday, July 13, 2012

AGU 2012 Session - EP002 Advances in Experimental Earth Surface Processes

Dear colleagues,

We encourage you to participate in our AGU session, "EP002 Advances in Experimental Earth Surface Processes." In addition to highlighting exciting new physical experiments and methods, we will use this session will spur community conversations about collecting, sharing, and archiving experimental data and tools, and building collaborations between experimentalists, modelers, and theoreticians.

Invited Speakers:
Leonard Sklar (San Francisco State University)
Stephen DeLong (Biosphere 2)
Jorge Abad (University of Pittsburgh)
Alessandro Cantelli (Shell Oil)

Description:
Physical experiments designed to clarify mechanisms and rates of Earth's surface evolution have contributed much to our understanding of Earth science. By highlighting recent progress, including new methods and techniques, we seek to create a venue to coalesce the community around current opportunities to share and develop resources for experimental science. Presentations and posters are sought from the wide range of surface process experiments where material transport plays a central role, especially those that integrate new and old datasets, use novel techniques for observations and data collection, develop reusable tools to analyze or share large datasets, or require cross-disciplinary communication.

Cheers,
Leslie Hsu, lhsu@ldeo.columbia.edu
Wonsuck Kim, delta@jsg.utexas.edu
Brandon McElroy, bmcelroy@uwyo.edu

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Sharing our experimental data and EarthCube

Dear Sediment Experimentalists,

Hope all is going well in the laboratory. In this message we have information about
(1) sharing our research topics and data with each other with a Google Fusion Table
(2) EarthCube, one of NSF’s latest efforts on data and knowledge management.


(1) Sediment Experimentalists Fusion Table

We’ve been trying to think of quick ways to share information about our research with the rest of the community, whether it is in progress or already published. So, we are testing a new resource for data sharing among sedimentary researchers.  This is the “Sediment Experimentalists” Google Fusion Table, put together by Raleigh Martin.  It can be viewed here:

To access the table view:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S508266LfWw

To access the maps view:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S508269Asyx

Our long-term goal is to generate a robust, secure, and easy-to-use framework for data sharing among sedimentary researchers.  In the near term, we believe that the Google Fusion Table, which is free and (relatively) easy to use, can act as a testbed for data sharing.  In addition to being free, the Fusion Table provides nice visualization and sorting tools.

We encourage you to add information about your own research projects to the Fusion Table.  If you would like to do this, please send an email to sedimentexp@gmail.com with your Gmail address (if you don’t have one, you can create one for free).  More detailed instructions for using the Fusion Table are available here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C34iCc4yd7stvUm4grpcz1q6KMhIFYpfx0VFlhb5UWU/edit

Please note that, while it is helpful, it is not necessary to directly share your data online.  Simply listing that the data is available (and providing contact information) is very useful.  Also, while this project is mainly aimed at experimentalists, we also encourage sharing of field data as well.

(2) What is EarthCube?

Many of us may have received multiple emails recently encouraging us to take a survey for EarthCube and participate in the discussions. One of the most common responses to these emails was probably “What is EarthCube?” Here are two attempts at answering that question:
(1) What is EarthCube? from the Sediment Experimentalists blog
(2) EarthCube’s official What is EarthCube? document
The short answer is “a knowledge and data management system,” but we also encourage you to follow the links to learn more. At this early stage in the system’s development, scientist feedback to the system architects is extremely important. If you are interested in this effort, please join the EarthCube site as a member and connect with us (Wonsuck Kim, Leslie Hsu, Brandon McElroy, and Raleigh Martin. We are participating in the events and will make sure that our community’s voice is heard at EarthCube.


Please reply to this email address (sedimentexp@gmail.com) with any comments, feedback, or questions.

Happy experimenting,

Leslie, Brandon, Raleigh, Wonsuck

Archived messages:
http://sedimentexperiments.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

What is EarthCube?

Many of you may have received emails asking you to fill out a survey for EarthCube - in fact we have posted the call for the survey on this blog as well. When you received the email, you may have thought "What is EarthCube anyway?"

The survey states "EarthCube is a bold, new, NSF initiative to create an integrated data and knowledge management system that extends across the geosciences." On the EarthCube website, currently there are hundreds of scientists and cyberinfrastructurists who have organized into groups such as "Data Discovery, Mining, Integration," "Semantics and Ontologies," "Interoperability," and "Education and Workforce Development." (See all Groups.) At this early stage, they are creating roadmaps of how to make progress on their particular topics.

What does this mean for a disciplinary scientist like a sediment experimentalist? The products of the EarthCube effort will be apps, web services, and resources that help you to do science in a more efficient and effective way. But before the products are built, your input into what types of data you collect and use, how you interact with it, and what you want to do, will help the programmers and computer scientists to develop the products. Think about your favorite data resources today - high resolution topography (USGS, OpenTopography), hydrograph data (USGS), geophysical data (IRIS, EarthScope), models (CSDMS, CIG), and publications (ScienceDirect, Web of Knowledge, Google Scholar) - what would it take for these entities to work in concert so that you can seamlessly access and discover the information that you need?

Here at the Sediment Experimentalists site, we hope to facilitate the communication between our scientific community and the EarthCube effort. Don't hesitate to ask any questions in the comments or by email (sedimentexp@gmail.com). As a first step, you can take a look at the EarthCube site: http://earthcube.ning.com/, and register as a participant or join a mailing list.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Scientist survey on data for EarthCube

We want you to help guide EarthCube, a bold new NSF initiative to create an integrated data and knowledge management system for the geosciences. Researchers funded by NSF want to know your views on the needs in data and cyberinfrastructure across the geosciences.  

Help shape EarthCube by telling us how easy (or hard) it is to find, get, and use data, models, and computational/visualization tools for the geosciences. Share your views on how to best move EarthCube forward.  Click here: http://sgiz.mobi/s3/EarthCube-Stakeholder-Consent-EC *   Results will be posted on http://earthcube.ning.com in early June and presented at the June 12-14 EarthCube Charrette in Arlington, VA.

*This link takes you to a survey to capture your view on how to best advance data-enabled geoscience.  Your participation is voluntary.  Your identity will be kept separate from your responses and be kept strictly confidential.  Only aggregate findings will be reported.  As for all surveys of this kind, it starts with a voluntary consent form.  Please share your views by visiting the link above and telling us what you think.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Data Policies and Plans

Dear Sediment Experimentalists,

Greetings, hope you are all doing well as spring approaches.

Thank you to those who have responded to our survey about Experimental data, we have some great responses which will guide our future plans. There is still time to contribute your thoughts, and we want to hear them. Please respond during the month of March (a good spring break activity, perhaps?).
[Link to Survey]

In the meantime, we are planning a few projects including
  • an AGU Session that will highlight cutting-edge laboratory experiments and data handling
  • a face-to-face meeting for our community
  • a web space where you can contribute ideas and questions
The first thing we've done is set up a place to archive our messages to you. At this web site, you can also make comments and share your ideas: http://sedimentexperiments.blogspot.com

We will also use these email messages to share information on best data practices. Here, we post some links about the Data Policy of the U.S. National Science Foundation and some tools that have been developed to help researchers with their data management plans. Although not all of us are funded through the NSF, other funding sources have similar data policies, and the requirements for data sharing and archiving are becoming more strict than the past.
How might our sediment experimentalist group help you to meet these data sharing requirements?

Happy experimenting,
Sediment Experimentalist Group

p.s. [Link to Survey]

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Sediment Experimentalists Update

Dear Gilbert Club,

Thanks for the recent response to our call for those interested in building up the community of laboratory experimentalists.

Now that many of us are getting into the full swing of a new year, we just wanted to send an update and call to the entire group one more time.

Here is a link to a document describing the vision for this organizing effort:
http://tinyurl.com/sed-exp-doc

If you contacted us previously, you are on an email list that will be used for all communications after this one. It was great to hear from you; we had response from a wide range of people:
  • an investigator with access to old abandoned flumes
  • individuals involved in a range of experiments
  • early career scientists who have just set up their own lab
  • field experimentalists
  • applied mathematicians

We are still soliciting general responses, but here are some of the ideas already shared:
  • develop a dialog with major journals on the need to support publication of laboratory methods and datasets
  • opinion paper to one of the AGU journals
  • concern about the timing of sharing data in order to protect students
  • need for quick communication about the unique details of the setup, like speed dating
  • collaborate on attempting to replicate each other's work in the other labs
  • workshops
  • Google spreadsheet for individuals to share details of their data or areas of expertise and contact info
In addition, and to follow-up with many of the initial responses we have developed a brief survey. [Survey]  We hope that you will consider taking a few minutes to answer these questions and help direct our efforts to make them as useful to our community as possible.

You can still join the focused mailing list by responding to any of us.  And thanks in advance for your time.

Cheers,

Leslie Hsu (Lamont-Doherty, lhsu@ldeo.columbia.edu)
Wonsuck Kim (UT Austin, delta@jsg.utexas.edu)
Brandon McElroy (U Wyoming, bmcelroy@uwyo.edu)