Enabling Crosscutting Visualization for Geoscience

Our world is a complex ecosystem of interdependent processes. Geoscientists collect individual datasets addressing hyperspecific questions, which seek to probe these deeply intertwined processes. Scientists are beginning to explore how investigating relationships between disciplines can foster richer and more holistic research, but visualization tools are conventionally designed to address hyperspecific, rather than holistic, analysis. Bridging the vast wealth of available data will require new tools. Visualization has the potential to support holistic cross-disciplinary analysis to understand the complex innerworkings of our world, but doing so requires a paradigm shift to understand how visualization might enable lines of inquiry transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries. We present challenges for visualization in fostering such holistic geoscience analyses.