Earth system sciences is being challenged by the intellectual and the
societal requirements of how to quantify the spatial patterns and
temporal dynamics of changes in the atmosphere, landscape, and seascape,
including human resources management. There are multiple issues in how
to do this. The first is establishing the multi-disciplinary basis of
how to systematically organize the required geophysical elements, from
the very slow geological process forming the basic template to the very
fast moving event-driven processes brought on by an individual
rainstorm. The second is how to mobilize, access, see, and interact with
the very disparate sources of information required. The third problem,
perhaps the most difficult, is how to get the disparate disciplinary and
management experts to constructively interact. These requirements drove
the process for establishing the PRISM "Virtual Puget Sound." The basic
construct is recognizing the inherent time and space attributes of the
landscape, and then constructing an informatics environment that will
allow the respective elements to be brought together in a collaboratory.
Central to the enterprise is the use of an XML-enabled DataStream, to
mobilize data from archives to models to visualizations. Outcomes are
addressing such regional issues and daily stream flow, seasonal water
supply and demand, low oxygen in Hood Canal, and sewage treatment plan
siting. This model is being extended, as an Earth System Module,
elsewhere in the world, from the Amazon to the Mekong.