SEN Summer Newsletter

Dear experimentalists,

Wishing plentiful, efficient, and accurate data collection for those of you in the laboratory this summer.

Here is a list of opportunities that you won't want to miss!

• SEN AGU Grant Competition
• AGU and GSA Sessions of Interest
• Recent and Upcoming Workshops and Meetings
• New Resources

SEN AGU Grant Competition

The Sediment Experimentalist Network (SEN) is sponsoring a data-sharing contest for graduate students and early career scientists who feel passionate about making their data public. The top three winners will be awarded travel grants in the amount of $1000 for use towards the 2015 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting.

AGU and GSA sessions of interest

AGU: EP015: Experimental Studies in Surface Processes

Session Description: Physical experiments are a useful tool for studying and simplifying the complex natural systems we seek to understand. Experiments allow us to isolate individual variables ranging from grain scale to landscape scale that are often difficult or impossible to measure in the field. Experiments are often scaled to natural landscapes using system characteristic dimensionless numbers. However, many scientists have been able to reproduce natural phenomena without rigorous dynamical scaling. This session aims to represent experimental studies in surface processes across all temporal and spatial scales. We especially encourage submissions that emphasize improvements on understanding experimental scaling and linking experiments to natural systems and numerical models.

Conveners: Anastasia Piliouras; Kimberly Litwin Miller, John B Shaw, Kyle M Straub

AGU and GSA sessions organized by the EarthCube Outreach team

• AGU: IN013: Creating Effective Information Access and Infrastructure to Resolve Complex Science Research Questions
• AGU: IN021: Facilitating Open Science and Data through Scientist Engagement and Evolving Technology
• GSA: T45. Transforming the Life of the Geoscientist from Planning to Post-Submission: Cyberinfrastructure as an Agent of Change

Recent and Upcoming Workshops and Meetings

Photos from the Mixed Sediment Modelling Workshop

In late May, the workshop on Modelling Mixed-Sediment River Morphodynamics took place in Delft, the Netherlands. See a photo album from the talks and experiments here.

Binghamton Symposium: Laboratory Experiments in Geomorphology

The 46th Annual Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium will take place on Friday, September 18 to Sunday, September 20, 2015 in Buffalo, NY, with the theme of Laboratory Experiments in Geomorphology. 

All are encouraged to bring a poster to share their work. Poster abstracts due on August 1.

See the second circular and more information at https://www.ubevents.org/event/bgs46.

New Resources

New experimental data description template

SEN has published a recommended experimental data description template in the paper Data management, sharing, and reuse in experimental geomorphology: Challenges, strategies, and scientific opportunities (2015, Geomorphology, Hsu, Martin, McElroy, Litwin-Miller, Kim). 

We are looking for feedback on the proposed template and any suggestions or comments. sedimentexp@gmail.com

Also check out the other articles in the Special Issue on Laboratory Experiments in Geomorphology.

A new interface to browse sediment dynamics models

Need a model for exploring your sediment-related research question? A large collection of community-contributed surface dynamics models reside in the CSDMS model repository. When was the last time you browsed it?

The EarthCube GeoSoft project has built a new interface that allows you to quickly search and compare CSDMS models.

Read more at New interface to browse sediment dynamics models. 

New interface to browse sediment dynamics models

Need a model for exploring your sediment-related research question? A large collection of community-contributed surface dynamics models reside in the CSDMS model repository. When was the last time you browsed it?

The EarthCube GeoSoft project has built a new interface that allows you to quickly search and compare CSDMS models. 

For example, you could search on keyword "delta," and choose to compare three models and simultaneously see their description, authors, software language, operating system, and test data. (Note: to see only CSDMS models, make sure to filter by "Publisher = CSDMS".)

GeoSoft's software comparison interface. Blue areas on the pie chart mean more information is filled out.

The site was recently released, and the GeoSoft project welcomes any feedback from the SEN community. How else would you like to search for and learn about models? You can email sedimentexp@gmail.com or the PI of GeoSoft, Yolanda Gil, at gil@isi.edu with any comments. 

GeoSoft is also developing easy methods for investigators to Publish software, using the OntoSoft vocabulary. (If you are very geeky you may enjoy exploring the documentation.)

Related links:

• GeoSoft Training (Documenting Software, Making Software Executable by Others, etc.)

With the help of projects like GeoSoft, we can all look forward to an easier path to making our scripts and software available for reuse and citation. This means more time for experiments in the lab!

SEN Graduate Student and Early Career AGU Travel Grant Contest

The Sediment Experimentalist Network (SEN) is sponsoring a data-sharing contest for graduate students and early career scientists who feel passionate about making their data public. The top three winners will be awarded travel grants in the amount of $1000 for use towards the 2015 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting.

The Sediment Experimentalist Network (SEN) is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) EarthCube program as a Research Coordination Network (RCN). SEN integrates the efforts of sediment experimentalists to build a knowledge base for data collection and management. The network facilitates cross-institutional collaborative experiments and communicates with the research community about data and metadata guidelines for sediment-based experiments. This effort aims to improve the efficiency and transparency of sedimentary research for field geologists and modelers as well as experimentalists. More information is available here: http://earthcube.org/group/sen

The contest will be judged on the quantity and quality of participation in the SEN Knowledge Base (www.sedexp.net), which contains data catalog entries and descriptions of experimental setups, methods, equipment. To begin, create an account on the website and then start creating entries for your experiments. The more entries, the more likely you are to win!

Eligibility

This contest is open to current graduate students and early career scientists (within 5 years of graduating) who are interested in helping make data more accessible.

Requirements

1. Sign up for the SEN Newsletter: http://goo.gl/s7dLjb
2. Create a Knowledge Base account at www.sedexp.net
3. Start posting entries of your experimental data, set-ups, methods, and equipment.
4. Send a one-page document to sedimentexp@gmail.com as described below 

Contest Entry

To enter the contest, please send a one-page document containing contact information, short professional biography, and a list of your SEN Knowledge Base entries to sedimentexp@gmail.com.

Selection of Winners

Winners will be selected on the quality (completeness of entry) and quantity (total number of entries) of entries to the SEN Knowledge Base. Winners will be notified via email and will be given instructions on the funding process. Names of winners will also be featured in the upcoming SEN Newsletter. Winners should acknowledge funding from NSF SEN when presenting their work at AGU and attend SEN Townhall Meeting.

Timeline

June 15th: Contest opens
August 31st: All entries must be received
September 30th: Notification of winners

Questions? Please contact SEN at sedimentexp@gmail.com.

Call for Geoscience Papers of the Future

Do you have software or scripts that you developed for an old project, wish you could make it reusable, but aren't sure how to proceed and get proper credit for your effort?

If so, the Geoscience Papers of the Future (GPF) Initiative, part of the GeoSoft project, is a solution!

The GPF effort aims to "get geoscientists to publish papers together with the associated digital products of their research," with targeted training of documentation of software, datasets, workflows, and figures. A special issue of Earth and Space Science, an open access AGU journal, will feature GPFs submitted by January 1, 2016.

For more information contact Yolanda Gil at gil@isi.edu.

The GPF is just one of the things we learned about at the EarthCube All Hands Meeting last week. EarthCube funds the Sediment Experimentalist Network to bring together our community and provide a liaison to the cyberinfrastructure research world.