SolidEarth: a new Digital Earth system for the modeling and visualization of the whole Earth space

Abstract

Although many of the first-generation Digital Earth systems have proven to be quite useful for the modeling and visualization of geospatial objects relevant to the Earth’s surface and near-surface, they were not designed for the purpose of modeling and application in geological or atmospheric space. There is a pressing need for a new Digital Earth system that can process geospatial information with full dimensionality. In this paper, we present a new Digital Earth system, termed SolidEarth, as an alternative virtual globe for the modeling and visualization of the whole Earth space including its surface, interior, and exterior space. SolidEarth consists of four functional components: modeling in geographical space, modeling in geological space, modeling in atmospheric space, and, integrated visualization and analysis. SolidEarth has a comprehensive treatment to the third spatial dimension and a series of sophisticated 3D spatial analysis functions. Therefore, it is well-suited to the volumetric representation and visual analysis of the inner/outer spheres in Earth space. SolidEarth can be used in a number of fields such as geoscience research and education, the construction of Digital Earth applications, and other professional practices of Earth science.

Keywords

Digital Earth / Earth space / full dimensionality / visualization

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science and Technology Program of China (Grant No. SinoProbe-08), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40902093), the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 07CZZ019), the Development Foundation of Experimental Teaching Equipment in East China Normal University (Grant No. 64100010) and the Open Foundation of Shanghai Key Lab for Urban Ecological Processes and Eco-Restoration (Grant No. SHUES2011A06). We would like to thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive suggestions for improving the paper.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg