This article, by 28 authors from as many institutions, announces the creation of, and research agenda for, a new National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Research Coordination Network on Intelligent Systems for Geosciences. The goal of this activity is to develop knowledge-rich intelligent systems inspired by challenges that are specific to the geosciences.

By bringing together intelligent systems and multiple geosciences communities on a regular basis, the authors propose to implement an ambitious and translational research agenda to advance research in the geosciences at larger and multidimensional scales. A key insight is that intelligent systems must “incorporate significant amounts of geosciences knowledge” in order to provide useful results. For example, “in the absence of comprehensive data,” artificial intelligence (AI) is needed to collect data when and where it matters.

The article describes a research-driven roadmap. The Research Coordination Network’s goals include joint workshops, repositories for challenge problems, and a repository of learning materials to “reduce the steep learning curve involved in understanding advanced problems in the other discipline.”

This collaboration promises to be an interesting one and worth knowing about.