Paleogeography Working Group
Leader, co-leader and group members
Leader, Sabin Zahirovic,
University of Sydney
Co-leader, Mingcai Hou,
Chengdu University of Technology
Co-leader, James Ogg,
Purdue University, Chengdu University of Technology
Member, Jianghai Yang,
China University of Geosciences, Wuhan
Member, Christopher Scotese,
Northwestern University
Member, Gabriele Ogg,
Geological TimeScale Foundation
Member, Peter Cawood,
Monash University
Member, Ta Hoa Phuong,
Vietnam National University
Member, Laiming Zhang,
China University of Geosciences, Wuhan
Member, Hanting Zhong,
Chengdu University of Technology
Member, Anqing Chen,
Chengdu University of Technology
Member, Linna Zhang,
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology
Group Introduction
1. Group missions
Earth’s paleogeography provides key insights into our evolving planet, in particular the critical interactions between the plate-mantle system and the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Paleogeographic reconstructions, incorporating the range of tectonic and geographic environments over time, provide the foundation in evaluating sea level and climate change, basin evolution, biogeographic dispersal of plants and animals, as well as the formation of critical energy and ore systems. The DDE Paleogeography Working Group aims to integrate with the other research programs to provide a deep-time framework for modelling, visualizing, and interrogating ancient Earth environments for spatio-temporal knowledge discovery.
DDE cyberinfrastructure
The power of the DDE models of our evolving planet will be realized through spatio-temporal data mining. This process is underpinned by a robust knowledge tree that documents the information model that captures the relationships between paleogeography and other geological data constraints such as sedimentology, stratigraphy, paleobiology, and proxy records of climate, tectonism, and other geological processes. The DDE Paleogeography Working Group is developing ‘lexicons’ for stratigraphic formation names, standardization of geological timescales, as well as compiling geological data in a cohesive Geographic Information System and database infrastructure to create a unified paleo-environmental classification system.
Metadata design
The initial phase of the DDE Paleogeography Working Group has been to synthesize existing databases with spatial and temporal constraints, as well as the critical metadata. For example, fossil specimens can be used in paleogeographic reconstructions where their location can also be linked to a
geological age, the facies and paleo-environmental indicator of the host rock, as well as the typical paleo-environmental indicator of such fossils. Similarly, it is crucial to maintain the stratigraphic age metadata so that timescale standardization and updates can be applied. The DDE Paleogeography Working Group is designing workflows and data curation to specifically cater to and interface with the ‘knowledge tree’, which will be a key component of the spatio-temporal data mining infrastructure.
Data curation with FAIR principles
Data sharing between DDE research programs and the broader Earth science community will be critical for the success for the DDE program, particularly to prevent duplication of effort and ensure long-term data utility. Data collation uses common data storage formats (Shapefiles, ASCII, etc.) as well as community standards in geographic datums (e.g., WGS84). Importantly, we use open-source software like QGIS and GPlates for data curation and linking with open-access community plate tectonic reconstructions, which form an important connection to other parts of the DDE program. Data generated as part of DDE and published will be made open-access wherever possible – data can be stored in community repositories like PANGAEA and Zenodo, while workflows can be stored and shared using GitHub.
Organizing community meetings for data-driven research
Communication within the DDE Paleogeography Working Group, and across the other 28 working groups, is key to the success of the DDE program in the coming years. Our working group will have comprehensive Zoom video conference meetings every two months, supplemented by e-mail and other communications. Once the COVID travel restrictions are eased, we will meet at least once a year in person. Specifically, we aim to organize one “conference day” each year where updates of the working group are shared with the broader community.
2. Three-year goals (2020-2022)
The DDE Paleogeography Working Group has set clear goals for the next three years, working towards a “Global Paleogeographic Atlas” of depositional settings, tectonic-lithofacies and climatic-ecosystem zones, as well as the decadal goal of producing a 5D Digital Earth (three dimensions of space, through time, and with uncertainty). The summary of the 2020-2022 goals are:
1. Refine depositional-environment and volcanic-province Knowledge Trees to maximize capture of data and usability
2. Work towards a universal Lexicon for all geologic formations around the world
3. Develop interactive web service for interrogating regional/global geology
a. Focus on Asia initially to demonstrate the infrastructure
4. Collating and standardization of existing regional and global paleogeographic atlases
a. Combine regional and global paleogeographies stored as polygons
b. Collate paleo-elevation estimates and atlases
5. Target specific regions and intervals for testing/showcasing digital Earth reconstruction
a. A global paleogeographic atlas, built with GPlates, has been implemented
b. Regional refinements will start in Asia and Australia, where high-resolution data is available
c. Other regions will be refined within the 5-year goal of the Global Paleogeographic Atlas
6. Outreach and education modules for visibility
a. Communicating with the scientific community through research papers and
collaborations
b．Engaging social media, school outreach, and community engagement to demonstrate the evolving “face” of our planet and implications for environmental change and the (global and regional) economy.
Project Description
1. Brief description
The DDE Paleogeography Working Group integrates paleo-environmental records, proxy indicators, and other geological data to reconstruct the ancient geography of our planet. The five-year plan is to build and release an on-line "Global Paleogeographic Atlas” of depositional settings, tectonic-lithofacies and climatic-ecosystem zones. This will be a standard reference for testing against other geologic data and to produce community infrastructure to enable spatio-temporal data mining and knowledge discovery using the DDE framework. The 2020-2021 timeframe is crucial to build on the momentum already generated, particularly to enable the continued development of Paleogeography infrastructure that documents Earth’s evolving marine and terrestrial environments.
We use the global paleogeographic reconstructions from Cao et al. (2017), as well as the Scotese (2016) PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas digital paleo-elevation model. However, paleo-environments for Asia with their respective metadata need to be digitized from publications (such as Golonka et al., 2006), incorporated from existing high-resolution regional paleogeographic atlases such as the Paleogeographic Atlas of Australia (Langford et al., 2001), or incorporated from community resources like the Paleobiology Database (www.paleobiodb.org). Gathering these resources is the first step towards creating a comprehensive, modern, and multi-scale paleogeographic framework. A second step will be to synthesize these components into one cohesive framework with standardized metadata.
To enable the utility of our data packages within the broader DDE framework, the continued refinements of the “Knowledge Trees” will be crucial, which interfaces with ongoing efforts to build a unified Lexicon of all geological formations globally. As our paleogeographic data will be collated in digital present-day co-ordinates, it can be easily linked to community digital plate tectonic reconstructions in GPlates. For 2020-2022, Asia and Australia will form the basis of detailed work to refine a paleogeographic framework. For 2022-2024, it will be crucial to deploy the workflows to capture detailed paleogeographic reconstructions of Europe, Africa, Antarctica, and the Americas. These activities will be shared with the community using digital files and interactive web services, which have been partially constructed (http://dev.timescalecreator.com:5001/) and will be expanded to include paleogeographic globes for the GPlates Portal (http://portal.gplates.org/#apps-anchor).
References
Cao, W., S. Zahirovic, N. Flament, S. Williams, J. Golonka, and R. D. Müller (2017), Improving global paleogeography since the late Paleozoic using paleobiology, Biogeosciences, 14(23), 5425-5439.
Golonka, J., M. Krobicki, J. Pajak, N. Van Giang, and W. Zuchiewicz (2006), Global Plate Tectonics and Paleogeography of Southeast Asia, 128 pp., Faculty of Geology, Geophysics and Environmental Protection, AGH University of Science and Technology, Arkadia, Krakow.
Langford, R. P., et al. (2001), Palaeogeographic Atlas of Australia, Geoscience Australia.
Scotese, C. R. (2016), PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for GPlates and the PaleoData Plotter Program, PALEOMAP Project, http://www.earthbyte.org/paleomap-paleoatlas-for-gplates/.
2. Expound on the alignment with the vision and mission of DDE
The ambitions of the Paleogeography Working Group are to create a community DDE infrastructure, aligning with the primary goals of the program, and providing crucial links between the remaining working groups. The proposed activities are elaborated below, as well as their link to the DDE vision.
1. Develop a universal Lexicon for geologic formations
The information model framework requires a “common dictionary” that will enable efficient knowledge discovery through the relational “Knowledge Tree” infrastructure. The aim for this year is to develop simple standardized web-based format of the lexicon, and migrate translated versions of the printed lexicons for China and for Vietnam into a dual English/Chinese and English/Vietnamese website in conjunction with their stratigraphic commissions. We have established coordination with the appropriate groups in both China and Vietnam for this purpose, and a similar collaboration has started with a team of stratigraphers from India-Bangladesh-Nepal. A prototype for a public (open-source) web-database system and display for such information was developed (via Purdue computer engineering) during the past six months (http://dev.timescalecreator.com:5001/), and will be expanded to include other regions. These will be coordinated with the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the Commission for the Geologic Map of the World.
2. Refine depositional-environment and volcanic-province Knowledge Trees to maximize capture of data and usability
The goal is to capture and convert the current descriptions of sediment and volcanic units with spatial and temporal constraints. A secondary goal is to apply an automatic deep-search ("DeepDive") into geologic literature using the lexicon to extract updated descriptions of sediment/volcanic facies with location. Our initial proof-of-concepts will be to: 1) retrieve lacustrine facies interpretations (e.g., saline/brackish) for East Asia, and (2) chronologically stack the succession of depositional facies in the Sichuan Basin through the Phanerozoic.
3. Develop interactive web service for interrogating regional/global geology
The Devonian of China (about 300 formations) and some aspects of the Paleogene-Neogene geology of India are already presented in a proof-of-concept online interactive portal (http://dev.timescalecreator.com:5001/). The Carboniferous and Permian lexicon and data will be populated for China, and efforts will begin to link the data to the GPlates plate and paleogeographic framework.
4. Target specific regions and intervals for testing/showcasing digital Earth reconstruction
A global paleogeographic atlas has been built in GPlates using recent plate tectonic reconstructions. This will be modified to include high-resolution paleogeography for Asia and Australia, using existing compilations for the Devonian to present. A prototype of 1 Ga to Devonian paleogeography will be delivered in 2021, as a deeper-time plate tectonic reconstruction is finalized.
4. Feasibility analysis
The Paleogeography Working Group is composed of an interdisciplinary and complementary team, ranging from tectonics to stratigraphy, and experts in paleogeography. For example, Prof Chris Scotese has been the world leader in paleogeographic reconstructions for a number of decades, Dr Sabin Zahirovic is an expert on syntheses and computer simulations of East Asia plate motions and basins, and Prof James Ogg is a global leader in standardizing geological data and improving community frameworks like integrated geologic timescales. Prof Mingcai Hou is a world expert in sedimentology and geological constraints for basin evolution and paleogeographic constraints, and Prof Jianghai Yang is a leader in records of volcanism across Asia and the world, highlighting the complementary nature of the Paleogeography team. Open-source tools like GPlates and QGIS enable us to digitize, store, and share our data products in a Geographic Information System framework, while enabling us to integrate them with other DDE streams. The previous detailed Paleogeographic Atlas of China was coordinated by the group at Chengdu University of Technology, therefore we have access to their tested methods, datasets, and interpretations to begin the initial migration into detailed digital paleogeographic databases. For the East Asia demo project, we have set up collaborations with Vietnam, India, and China. Geologists in Malaysia and Thailand have expressed a desire to join the team.
The inherent challenge for us and the other DDE streams is the fact that geological data may be incomplete – while we need to create complete global paleogeographic maps. As our approach is a merge of data and models, we will track the data inputs so that interpolations and extrapolations can be easily identified. This was pioneered by the Paleogeographic Atlas of Australia, and we will follow a similar approach, and expand it to quantify uncertainty. Some geological data will remain inaccessible to us (such as industry compilations), but the framework will be adaptable to future data releases. Communication within the Paleogeography Working Group has been effective, but now that more projects have been deployed, more frequent meetings will be organized (minimum every 2 months) – especially in the context of COVID travel restrictions. We will endeavor to be more inclusive and invite other research groups to join our effort, particularly to reduce the risk of duplication, while also incorporating the skills of colleagues internationally.