EAGER: Normalizing Paleoclimate Variables to Support Data Intensive Science

该奖项由“早期概念探索研究基金”（EAGER）项目资助，旨在使更广泛的科学界和感兴趣的公众更容易获得古气候数据。该项目将帮助NSF与位于科罗拉多州博尔德的NOAA世界古气候数据中心（WDC-Paleo）协调合作，努力创建描述古气候数据集中变量的标准，并使用这些标准对WDC-Paleo档案中的变量进行规范化。这些变量包括深度、年龄和用来推断过去气候的替代测量。为了实现这些目标，研究人员将利用数据生成器和数据科学家的专业知识，生成第一组可扩展的受控词汇表，这些词汇表在多个代理类型之间是一致的，并且具有支持数据密集型科学所需的详细级别。计划中的活动很好地适应了EAGER项目潜在的变革性、高风险和探索性，因为它是古气候学领域一条未经检验的前进道路。过去的相关工作仅限于古气候学的分支学科，更重要的是，没有专注于创建足够完整和精确的词汇表，以促进现在开始推动古气候学领域向前发展的各种数据汇编。这个项目本身也是跨学科的，因为它在很大程度上依赖于古气候和信息学社区的投入。如果取得成功，该项目将在古气候学领域产生巨大的影响，通过在该学科内以新的和变革性的方式使用大量代理数据集促进数据密集型分析，并通过与其他学科的合作。此外，这种活动有助于美国国家科学基金会遵守其联邦要求，帮助更广泛的科学界和感兴趣的公众从公共资助的研究中获取科学数据。

This award uses funds, under the auspices of the EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) program, for a project aimed at making paleoclimate data more accessible to the wider science community and the interested public.The project will help the NSF coordinate and cooperate with the NOAA World Data Center for Paleoclimatology (WDC-Paleo) in Boulder Colorado in an effort to create standards for describing variables in paleoclimate datasets and to use these standards to normalize variables in the WDC-Paleo archive. Such variables include depth, age, and proxy measurements used to infer past climate. To accomplish these goals, the researcher will draw upon the expertise of data generators and data scientists and will generate the first set of extensible controlled vocabularies that are consistent across multiple proxy types and that have the level of detail necessary to support data intensive science. The planned activities fit well into the potentially transformative, high risk, and exploratory nature of the EAGER programs because it is an untested path forward for the paleoclimatology community. Past related efforts were limited to sub-disciplines within paleoclimatology and, more importantly, not focused on creating vocabularies that are complete enough and precise enough to facilitate the sorts of data compilations that are now beginning to drive the field of paleoclimatology forward. This project is also inherently interdisciplinary, as it relies heavily on input from both the paleoclimate and the informatics communities. If successful, this project will have a large impact on the field of paleoclimatology by facilitating data-intensive analyses using large numbers of proxy datasets in new and transformative ways within the discipline and through collaboration with other disciplines. Furthermore, such an activity aids the NSF in complying with its federal requirements to aid access of scientific data from publicly-funded research by the wider science community and the interested public.