White House comments on National Geothermal Data System

The White House released a Fact Sheet on last week's Energy Datapalooza, that featured the formal launch of the AZGS-built and managed National Geothermal Data System, by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

The President's Science Advisor,Dr. John Holdren and Secretary Moniz blogged about the event -- and below is the Fact Sheet: Harnessing the Power of Data for a Clean, Secure, and Reliable Energy Future. In addition, you can watch the full video of the event on YouTube, and check out a photo gallery on Flickr.

 The Fact Sheet said this about NGDS:

Open geothermal data for scientists and industry: In response to industry demand, the Energy Department supported in the Recovery Act the creation of a National Geothermal Data System. Today, the Department of Energy is launching this resource that contains enough raw geoscience data to pinpoint elusive sweet spots of geothermal energy deep in the earth, enabling researchers and commercial developers to find the most promising areas for geothermal energy. Access to this data will reduce costs and risks of geothermal electricity production and, in turn, accelerate its deployment.

User community vision for geoscience cyberinfrastructure - NSF's EarthCube

I would like to draw your attention to the article "Community-Developed Geoscience Cyberinfrastructure: an End-User Vision for EarthCube", that was published last week in Eos, the American Geophysical Union’s weekly newspaper-style publication. This vision draws from the findings of the AZGS-organized EarthCube end-user workshops that took place in 2012 and 2013. It aims to provide more structure to geoscientists in anticipating what EarthCube could be and do.  Steve Richard, AZGS Geoinformatics Chief, is the lead author of the Eos article.

EarthCube is a National Science Foundation effort to create cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences.  AZGS is managing the 2-year long Test Enterprise Governance project in EarthCube to seek community consensus on how we design and implement a system architecture.  We also run the EarthCube website, www.earthcube.org, and community engagement activities, including the upcoming All Hands Meeting in Washington DC, June 24-26.

Hyperspectral core analysis demo underway in Tucson

The Australian company Corescan has brought their trailer-mounted hyperspectral core scanning system to Tucson this week to demonstrate the technology to the local mining industry before the facility moves to its new base in Hermosillo, Mexico.   Cores generally are brought to the facility but for larger or urgent jobs, the trailer can be set up on the exploration site.

The trailer is being hosted in Bronco Creek Exploration's parking lot [top right] and test runs are being done for a variety of core samples including some from the AZGS repository.   [bottom right, Corescan's Brigette Martini with AZGS' Mike Conway and unidentified technician, run scan on an Arizona core sample]

Corescan is evaluating the market for opening a US office with Tucson likely on the short list.

[note: an earlier version of this post mistakenly stated the trailer was at the offices of Bear Creek]

USGS soil geochemistry and mineral database: 45 elements at 4857 sampling sites

The U.S. Geological Survey has released a national database of geochemical analyses for 45 major and trace elements at each of 4857 sample sites from across the U.S.    The USGS gave us an online briefing of the system and we are just starting to explore the data for Arizona.

According to the announcement the USGS began sampling in 2007 for a low-density (1 site per 1,600 square kilometers, 4,857 sites) geochemical and mineralogical survey of soils in the conterminous United States as part of the North American Soil Geochemical Landscapes Project.

The sampling protocol for the national-scale survey included, at each site, a sample from a depth of 0 to 5 centimeters, a composite of the soil A horizon, and a deeper sample from the soil C horizon.  "The resulting data set provides an estimate of the abundance and spatial distribution of chemical elements and minerals in soils of the conterminous United States and represents a baseline for soil geochemistry and mineralogy against which future changes may be recognized and quantified. This report releases geochemical and mineralogical maps along with a histogram, boxplot, and empirical cumulative distribution function plot for each element or mineral."

Highlights of the USGS Soil Chemistry Program – now in public release.
•         4857 sampling sites (1 site/1,600 km2) conterminous U.S.
•         Results not unlike a blood test
•         Vast improvement on 1960s era nationwide study
•         Produce a soil geochem and mineralogical database in conterminous U.S.
•         Establish an archive of soil samples.
•         Provide background range of elements in soil
•         Sampling at 0-5 cm, composite of A horizon, composite of B or C horizon.
•         45 major and trace elements
•         19 mineral species (A and C horizon) – a first for soil survey of this magnitude
•         Soil pathogens (0-5 cm depth) – anthrax, plague, hooray!
•         Interactive web site in the works – release scheduled next week.
•         Data display on Google Earth – Kml files (PDF and GeoTiff, too)   


References:

Smith, D.B., Cannon, W.F., Woodruff, L.G., Solano, Federico, and Ellefsen, K.J., 2014, Geochemical and mineralogical maps for soils of the conterminous United States: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2014–1082, 386 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20141082.

Smith, D.B., Cannon, W.F., Woodruff, L.G., Solano, Federico, Kilburn, J.E., and Fey, D.L., 2013, Geochemical and mineralogical data for soils of the conterminous United States: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 801, 19 p., http://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/801/.

New land subsidence maps from AZ Dept. of Water Resources

Land subsidence maps have been updated on the Arizona Dept. of Water Resources website using InSAR (satellite interferometry) data through 2014, according to Brian Conway, head of the Geophysics/Surveying Section.  You can access the maps for each land subsidence feature at this link: http://www.azwater.gov/AzDWR/Hydrology/Geophysics/LandSubsidenceInArizona.htm

I copied the subsidence for the West Valley (Phoenix basin) from May 2010 to April 2014 as one example.

ADWR maintains subsidence maps for 18 basins (listed below) across Arizona, focusing those where over-pumping of groundwater is generating land subsidence and Earth fissures.   

 

Scottsdale/NE Phoenix	McMullen Valley	Picacho/Eloy	Fort Grant Rd
West Valley	Harquahala Valley	Maricopa-Stanfield	Kansas Settlement
Hawk Rock	Ranegras Valley	Tucson	Elfrida
Buckeye	Gila Bend	Green Valley	Bowie/San Simon
Holbrook Sinks	East Valley

Wonk Alert: New standard will improve energy data sharing

Energistics, the global non-profit standards organization for the upstream petroleum industry, has published the Energy Industry Profile (EIP) Version 1.0 of ISO 19115-1. The EIP is an open, non-proprietary metadata exchange standard designed to document structured and unstructured information resources of importance to members of the energy community and to maximize metadata interoperability within the industry. Energistics' Geoportal is a Reference Implementation of a searchable catalog compliant with the EIP metadata standard. The implementation demonstrates discovery of distributed resources documented by EIP and any of three metadata standards transformable to EIP (ISO 19115, ISO 19115-2, FGDC).    Steve Richard, Geoinformatics Chief at AZGS is a member of the Energistics' Metadata Work Group and played a key role in developing the EIP and shepherding it through the international approval process.

Publishing the EIP for the industry accomplishes three objectives: 

• Enable energy stakeholders to effectively and efficiently locate, analyze and retrieve a variety of information from distributed repositories

• Support a variety of data management needs as well as the exchange of data between and within organizations

• Leverage existing standards to encourage community adoption and integration into the business while exploiting existing resources for governance and maintenance.

Jay Hollingsworth, Chief Technical Officer of Energistics, said, "The adoption of the EIP specification is intended to promote tool development and best practices that will reduce the overhead required for metadata creation, maintenance and utilization."

According to Segun Oyebanji, CIO of Chevron Energy Technology Company and General Manager Technical Computing, and an Energistics Board Member, "The EIP can be used for a wide variety of energy industry resource types but the current focus is on information which has associated geographic coordinates."

"The RESQML SIG sees great value in using the EIP and plans to incorporate it into RESQML Version 2.0", stated Chris Legg, Geologist at BP and RESQML SIG Leader.

Scott Hills, a Consulting Research Scientist for Chevron and Energistics' Metadata Work Group Lead, explained that, "Although the EIP was developed with significant community input, it's based on a newly revised ISO standard.  As a result, the Work Group believes that its focus should now shift from development to adoption.  We believe this will best help the community begin to realize value from the EIP, and identify the highest value enhancements for the next release."

For more information, visit the Energistics web site to view the Energy Information Profile Standard.

 

 [this post is a modified version of the Energistics announcement]