Data:Geomaterials Vocab

Geomaterials Vocab dataset information page

Short Description

Simple visualization of part of the vocab

Statement: A Structured Vocabulary for Geomaterials

Abstract: Introduction

Word-based data are pervasive in the geosciences, even in the field of numerical modeling. Parameters, materials, processes, events are all identified linguistically and accompanying their namings is a semantic that involves causality, arrangement, units, agents, etc. The CSDMS Standard Names (http://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/CSDMS_Standard_Names) documents parameter naming syntaxes in the context of numerical modeling for earth surface dynamics. The vocabulary is computed from a corpus of glossaries, dictionaries, thesauri, ontologies, classifications. It is necessary to compute it because of the great number of geomaterials terms now available – estimated to be 10^4. Manual efforts to create a structured vocabulary through ontologies have encompassed only ~300 terms in several years of work (Geosciml 2012). Furthermore, the relationships in the existing structures are rudimentary. In contrast, by mining relationships from corpus hundreds of nodes and relationships can be gleaned from single glossary, etc. documents. The glossary etc. texts used here were sourced from institutions such as British Geological Survey, US National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA), US Geological Survey (USGS), Society for Sedimentary Geology, CSIRO Australia, US Federal Geographic Data Committee, Center for Deep Earth Exploration (CDEX) in Japan, World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the American Geological Institute (AGI).

The Vocabulary

As a contribution to earth surface modeling and data handling, a comprehensive vocabulary of earth materials is presented here. It is not an ontology, though formal ontology can be derived from it. It is a semantic net accompanied by some other information. Semantic nets allow for more complex and quantitative relationships than in ontologies. Geomaterials include soils, sediments, rocks, biogenic buildups, ice and snow, and man-moved and man-made materials. A paper on the vocabulary is being finalized.

Data format

Data type:	Substrates
Data origin:	Measured
Data format:	ASCII
Other format:
Data resolution:	All
Datum:	All

Data Coverage

Spatial data coverage: All
Temporal data coverage: Time series
Time period covered: All

Availability

Download data: http://instaar.colorado.edu/~jenkinsc/dbseabed/resources/geomaterials/GeomaterialsVocab.zip
Data source: http://instaar.colorado.edu/~jenkinsc/dbseabed/resources/geomaterials/GeomaterialsVocab.zip