The Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG) is a community-driven organization that advances Earth science by developing and disseminating software for

geophysics Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term ''geophysics'' som ...

and related fields. It is a

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

-sponsored collaborative effort to improve

geodynamic Geodynamics is a subfield of geophysics dealing with dynamics (physics), dynamics of the Earth. It applies physics, chemistry and mathematics to the understanding of how mantle convection leads to plate tectonics and geologic phenomena such as sea ...

modelling and develop, support, and disseminate

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

for the

geodynamics Geodynamics is a subfield of geophysics dealing with dynamics of the Earth. It applies physics, chemistry and mathematics to the understanding of how mantle convection leads to plate tectonics and geologic phenomena such as seafloor spreading, mo ...

research and higher education communities. CIG is located at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

, and is a member-governed consortium with 62 US institutional members and 15 international affiliates.

History

CIG was established in 2005 in response to the need for coordinated development and dissemination of software for geodynamics applications. Founded with an NSF cooperative agreement to

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

, in 2010, CIG moved to

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

under a new cooperative agreement from NSF.

Software

CIG hosts open source software in a wide range of disciplines and topic areas, such as

computational science Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a field in mathematics that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science that spans many disc ...

, seismology, mantle convection, long-term tectonics, and short-term crustal dynamics.

Software Attribution for Geoscience Applications (SAGA)

CIG started the SAGA project with an NSF EAGER award from the SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities for "Development of Software Citation Methodology for Open Source Computational Science".

References

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External links

* Earth sciences software infrastructure organizations Geodynamics {{geophysics-stub