| Abstract
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The rapid growth of data-rich resources as … The rapid growth of data-rich resources associated with Earth and other planetary studies, including maps created by in-situ and remote sensing techniques, as well as spatial and aspatial relational databases, is driving new requirements for an information infrastructure that will facilitate scientific discovery. Ongoing research suggests that an ontology-based framework will facilitate registration, management, integration and analysis of databases and other data objects in a web-based environment. For earth scientists, ontologies can be viewed as a representation paradigm that can be used to capture formal declarative specifications of geologic objects, phenomena, and their interrelationships (e.g. subclass, part of, above, etc.). Ontologies may be used to capture classification schemes such as those for minerals, rocks, geologic time scale, or geologic structures, and thereby provide an organizational structure for automatically classifying earth science data. This is only possible because ontologies contain explicit definitions of terms used by scientists to associate meaning to the data or relationships between datasets. Ongoing development and growth of an ontology-based framework for the solid earth requires utilization of existing community-accepted high level ontologies such as SWEET (Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology) and NADM (North American Geological Data Model). The high level SWEET ontology contains formal definitions for terms used in earth and space sciences, and it encodes structure that recognizes the spatial distribution of earth environments (earth realm) and the interfaces between different realms. These earth realms have associated properties with appropriate units and provide an extensible upper level terminology. Extension of these concepts to high-resolution ontologies where data reside is well underway. For example, we have developed new ontology-based packages containing Planetary Materials (elements, isotopes, rocks and minerals, as well as State of Matter), Planetary Structure, Location and Physical Properties to extend NADM and SWEET to include both relational and spatial databases that contain chemical, modal, textural, isotopic or structural data for rocks and minerals, and their location in 2 or 3-D space. These extensions allow searches and navigation across ontologies with distinct granularities to discover and integrate appropriate and conceptually- related databases. We also recognize that the full power of ontologies will be recognized when earth scientists can utilize this framework to conduct both object and process based integrative science. ect and process based integrative science.
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