Advocating for the Use of Informatics in the Earth and Space Sciences

Earth and space scientists are engaged in integrating knowledge stemming from different disciplines about the constituent parts of the complex Sun‐Earth system with the objective of understanding its properties as a whole system. Earth and space system analysis is a real challenge for scientists as well as for information technology (IT) experts. The scope and complexity of Earth and space system investigations demand the formation of distributed, multidisciplinary, collaborative teams [Foster and Kesselman, 2006]. The growing area of geoscience informatics is concerned with providing integrated access to a range of advanced information and processing resources for the environment.