| Abstract
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The vast majority of explorations of the E … The vast majority of explorations of the Earth system are limited in their ability to effectively explore the most important (often most difficult) problems because they are forced to interconnect at the data-element, or syntactic, level rather than at a higher scientific, or semantic, level. In many cases, syntax-only interoperability IS the state-of-the-art. Currently, in order for scientists and non-scientists to discover, access, and use data from unfamiliar sources, they are forced to learn details of the data schema, other people's naming schemes and syntax decisions. These constraints are limiting even when researchers are looking for information in their own discipline, but they present even greater challenges when researchers are looking for information spanning multiple disciplines, including some in which they are not extensively trained. Our project, the Semantically-Enabled Scientific Data Integration (hereafter SESDI), aims to demonstrate how ontologies implemented within existing distributed technology frameworks will provide essential, re-useable, and robust, support necessary for interdisciplinary scientific research activities. sciplinary scientific research activities.
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