Sara Walker and Harrison Smith AtTend Deep-time Data Driven Discovery Workshop

For the next three days (June 4-6), Sara Walker and Harrison Smith will be attending the 4D Workshop: Deep-time Data Driven Discovery and the Evolution of Earth. This unique interdisciplinary workshop focuses on a data-driven approach to understanding the history of our biosphere. Using big data analysis techniques such as network theory, the workshop addresses the following questions:

• What was the geological and geochemical context for life’s origins?
• Did biological catalysis follow from the chemistry of rocks and minerals?
• How did Earth’s earliest microbial life interact with and influence the geosphere?
• How did plate tectonics begin and to what extent are Earth’s surface and deep interior linked?
• When, and at what rate, did photosynthesis modify our planet’s near-surface environment?
• How did life’s subsequent complexification and migration to land alter geological and geochemical processes?

To follow along with the conference, visit the livestream link.

Carbon mineral-locality network. Mineral nodes colored by age (Ma) and sized by frequency of occurrence on Earth’s surface; locality nodes (black) sized by mineral diversity. (Image source: https://www.4d-workshop.net/about)