Incorporate temporal topology in a deep-time knowledge base to facilitate data-driven discovery in geoscience

Abstract

Data-driven discovery in geoscience requires an enormous amount of FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data derived from a multitude of sources. Many geology resources include data based on the geologic time scale, a system of dating that relates layers of rock (strata) to times in Earth history. The terminology of this geologic time scale, including the names of the strata and time intervals, is heterogeneous across data resources, hindering effective and efficient data integration. To address that issue, we created a deep-time knowledge base that consists of knowledge graphs correlating international and regional geologic time scales, an online service of the knowledge graphs, and an R package to access the service. The knowledge base uses temporal topology to enable comparison and reasoning between various intervals and points in the geologic time scale. This work unifies and allows the querying of age-related geologic information across the entirety of Earth history, resulting in a platform from which researchers can address complex deep-time questions spanning numerous types of data and fields of study.