Customized Building Blocks for Intuitive Geoscience Visualization

Scientific visualization software is designed to meet the needs of the entire range of scientific disciplines. However, each domain has a unique needs and a unique language that represents its most common subject matter and data, instantiated in literature and tradition. The geosciences, in particular, have a wide range of subdisciplines, and therefore data, each of which employ unique visual languages and visualization techniques familiar to their respective communities.

As data size and complexity continue to grow in tandem with computing power, geoscience researchers are increasingly turning to coupled models to understand dynamic, interdependent earth systems processes. Such models present distinct visualization challenges which call for improved design methodologies that allow for better analysis and intuitive communication of these complex issues.

In order to accommodate the specific needs within the geosciences we present a system of encodings which include artist-created, hand-crafted 2D and 3D glyphs, colormaps, color sequences, lines, and textures. Building on artistic principles, perceptual theory, and recent work investigating the affective and associative qualities of design elements, these encodings are specifically designed and organized ­­to represent common themes in geoscience data, such as flora types, fauna types, mineral types, land categories, ocean physics, ice and atmosphere characteristics and movement. We demonstrate potential applications of these encodings using three datasets: ocean biogeochemistry, arctic permafrost, and a global ocean, sea ice, and atmosphere coupled model.

Context for this work can be found at www.Sculpting-vis.com where you will find a rich variety of visualization encoding as well as the application software.