Items in this month's newsletter:
- Western Regional Workshop at the NV GIS Conference
- DOE Annual Peer Review
- NGDS YouTube Site
- AASG Contributions to the NGDS PI, Lee Allison on Arizona Public Media's Arizona Illustrated Science
- Upcoming Events
Western Regional Workshop at the NV GIS Conference
Thank you to all of the participants at the Western Regional Workshop, "Demystifying Interoperability," held May 14, 2013 in Reno, NV and for the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology for arranging the workshop locations! Overall, the workshop was a great experience for us as hosts, and we look forward to refining the process over the next few months as we prepare for the Central Region Workshop at the IL Geological Survey in July. These workshops are a critical piece of our sustainability preparation and planning, so we encourage you to each carve out the time to attend. At the workshop we covered the importance of interoperability, and demonstrated tools for using interoperable data. We also discussed the paradigm shift in data management - that data services and archiving are becoming more and more a part of general operating costs, in similar fashion to hosting a web site. Disaster recovery through Hyper V replication and virtualized servers were covered for the IT breakout session, and maps and data delivery were covered in the Geology breakout session. Finally, in the afternoon, we walked through the data delivery process, from general QA/QC of the data to deploying a service - thus demystifying web services. To view the presentations and documentation from the workshop, visit our GitHub directory. For those that attended the workshop, we would appreciate your feedback on the topics covered, clarification of any of the sessions, or suggestions for improvement prior to our next outing. Please contact us by email with suggestions. The next workshop will be at the Illinois Geological Survey in Urbana-Champaign in July. Dates are being confirmed and we'll release an announcement with workshop dates, final location, and lodging information as soon as we can.
Department of Energy's Geothermal Technology Office Annual Peer Review
On April 22-25, 2013, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) held its annual Peer Review Meeting at the Renaissance Denvery Hotel in Denver, CO. The GTO funds 154 research and development projects leveraging nearly $500 million in total combined investment, and 95 of those projects presented at the annual review event. These projects are reviewed by independent, qualified peers to assess key achievements in geothermal development and to meet strategic DOE guidelines. You can view the 2013 presentations in their entirety at the GTO 2013 Peer Review page, to view the AASG Contributions Presentation, click here. The NGDS also had a demonstration booth available at the Peer Review to introduce participants to the NGDS as well as capture feedback on the currently developing user-interface. Watch the demonstration video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR9kUJvJqy4. We'd like to thank the NGDS participants from Boise State University, Southern Methodist University, and Siemens Corporate Research for their assistance in creating this demonstration and staffing the exhibit.
NGDS YouTube Channel Launched
Now you can find all of your favorite tutorials and webinars in one place at the National Geothermal Data System YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/geothermaldata. This site has allowed us to better organize the materials that were once only available on http://stategeothermaldata.org. We are working to revise the Media page on http://stategeothermaldata.org, so check back by the end of the month for a new way of viewing the AASG related media.
Project PI, Lee Allison, on Arizona Public Media's Arizona Illustrated Science
On May 7, 2013, AASG Contributions to the NGDS PI, Lee Allison, was featured on Arizona Public Media's Arizona Illustrated Science in an interview by Biosphere 2 crewmember, Jane Poynter. Watch Dr. Allison's interview where he talks about geothermal energy and the NGDS.
Upcoming Events
- NGDS at AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibition, May 19-22, 2013: PI, Lee Allison, and Geoinformatics Specialist, Christy Caudill, will be staffing the NGDS booth 2144 at the upcoming AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibition. Beginning Tuesday, DOE Program Officer, Arlene Anderson will be on site as well. We'll be providing a video demo, as well as the ability to conduct live data searches. If you're attending, please stop by the booth. If you'd like a free pass to the exhibit hall, please contact us.
- Geothermal Break-Out at AASG Annual Meeting in Deadwood, SD, June 9-12, 2013: PI, Lee Allison, and Project Manager, Kim Patten, will be in attendance at the AASG Annual Meeting to present on sustaining the NGDS at state geological surveys in the Geothermal Break-Out Session, tentatively planned for Wednesday, June 12. For more information on the AASG Annual Meeting and to register visit: http://www.sdgs.usd.edu/AASG2013/
Items in this Month's Newsletter
- NGDS Goes to Canada for the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association Meeting
- New Content Model Repository is Released
- AZGS Prepares for the DOE Annual Peer Review
- Preparations Begin for Workshop at NV GIS Conference
- AASG Annual Meeting in Deadwood, SD
- Remembering Marshall Reed
From March 20-22, 2013 the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA) hosted its annual geothermal conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This year's theme of "Digging Deep" attracted participants from industry, academia, and government. NGDS was featured during the "Mapping & Database Workshop" which was held for the entire day on Thursday. This workshop offered a robust look at the recently produced Alberta Favorability Map, the CO2 North American Storage Atlas, NGDS, and the IGA Global Protocol and Reporting Code. Speakers participating in the NGDS included: Lee Allison, AZGS; Maria Richards, SMU; Steve Richard, AZGS; and Arlene Anderson, DOE. Additional information on the conference can be found here, and a program may be downloaded here. To read more about Dr. Allison's experiences at the event, please view his blog.
New Content Model Repository is Released
In order to facilitate and ease the use of Content Models, or Data Exchange Formats, across all of the NGDS projects we have implemented a repository for storing and maintaining system wide formats. This does not change any of the existing data formats, only makes it easier to find the correct format and for us to store the models in a clearer location. You can find a refreshed version of the Data Exchange Formats here; we will be revising the StateGeothermalData.org page soon. As long term users of the exchange formats, we value your feedback. If you have any suggestions on improving the functionality of this page, please send us a quick email.
AZGS Prepares for the DOE Annual Peer Review
AZGS has completed and submitted the required presentation and supplemental documents for the 2013 Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Office Annual Peer Review. The Review is taking place, April 22-25, 2013 at the Renissance Denver Hotel in Denver, CO. AZGS will present on Monday afternoon and host a NGDS booth near the registration table on Monday and Tuesday. The booth will provide an overview of the NGDS and provide information on how end-users, such as the attendees at the review, can utilize NGDS. Additional information on the review, including the agenda, is available on the EERE GTO site.
Preparations Begin for the NGDS User Workshop at NV GIS Conference
A one day workshop on NGDS, in particular on deploying compliant services and registering data, will be hosted at the NV GIS Conference on May 14, 2013 at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, NV. Additional information on this workshop is forthcoming; however, we recommend that current participants from within the region plan to attend. A second workshop will be hosted during the summer in Urbana-Champaign, IL for the east/midwest region.
AASG Annual Meeting
The AASG Annual Meeting is taking place in Deadwood, SD this year from June 9-13, 2013 at the Lodge at Deadwood Gaming Resort. Project PIs are encouraged to attend the geothermal breakout session where we will be discussing sustainability of the system.
Remembering Marshall Reed
The geothermal community lost a leading advocate with the passing of Dr. Marshall John Reed. Dr. Reed spent the majority of his career focusing on renewable and sustainable resource development. He is the co-author of the USGS 2008 Assessment of Geothermal Resources and worked for the DOE Geothermal Program when it was part of the EERE Office of Utility Technologies. A celebration of life will be held on April 21st in San Ramon Valley, CA. Additional information regarding the service is available here.
Items in this month's newsletter:
- National Geothermal Data System featured in Scientific American
- Oregon's New Geothermal Map using NGDS Data and Features
- Stanford Geothermal Conference Papers are Available
- NGDS Logo for distribution
- Other Quick Announcements
NGDS Featured in Scientific American
On February 25, 2013, Scientific American featured "New Geothermal Data System Could Open Up Clean-Energy Reserves" by William Ferguson. The article features a nice overview of the NGDS system with interviews featuring Susan Petty, president and chief technology officer at AltaRock Energy; Roland Horne, director of Stanford University's geothermal program; and Lee Allison, Arizona State Geologist and director AZ Geological Survey (AZGS). Please feel free to share this resource with your press contacts and on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. If you do share this article using social networking, please consider adding the hashtags #Geothermal and #NGDS. For an example, feel free to view the AZGS Twitter Site at: https://twitter.com/azgeology
Oregon's New Interactive Geothermal Map
On February 12, 2013 the Associated Press released the story "Oregon's geothermal resources on display in new online interactive map" by Jeff Barnard. The story features the new interactive online map posted by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. Additional coverage on this project is available from KTVZ "Spotlight on Oregon's geothermal potential" released February 24, 2013. This map uses data that has been digitized as part of the AASG project.
Stanford Geothermal Papers Are Now Available
The four papers presented as part of the NGDS Session at the Stanford Geothermal Conference on Reservoir Engineering are now available through the Stanford Geothermal Program's website at: https://pangea.stanford.edu/researchgroups/geothermal/stanford-geotherma.... Papers are written on the following topics:
- "NGDS User Centered Design - Meeting the Needs of the Geothermal Community," Harold BLACKMAN, Suzanne BOYD, Kim PATTEN, Sam ZHENG
- "NGDS Geothermal Data Domain Assessment of Geothermal Community Data Needs," David BLACKWELL, Toni BOYD, Roland HORNE, Joe MOORE, Duan NICKULL, Stephen RICHARD, Lisa SHEVENELL
- "NGDS Node Deployment Adoption of CKAN for Domestic and International Data Deployment," Ryan CLARK, Christoph KUHMUENCH, Stephen RICHARD
- "DOE Geothermal Data Repository - an NGDS Node Designed for the Collection and Provision of DOE Geothermal RD&D Projects Data," Jon WEERS, Arlene ANDERSON
We plan to compile these papers into a compendium of documents on the NGDS.
NGDS Logo
As a project participant, if you haven't already included a logo and link to the NGDS site from your homepage (or geothermal page), please consider doing so. Logo's in .png format are available for download at: http://www.stategeothermaldata.org/content/ngds_logos. When providing the link, please ensure that you link to the prime project web site at www.geothermaldata.org.
Other Announcements
For those State Geological Survey's linked with an academic institution consider applying to the U.S. Dept. of Energy's National Geothermal Student Competition. The application due date is March 29, 2013. The project seeks to engage students in collaborative exercise to develop a business plan for developing a geothermal enterprise, especially in their home state/region. Teams of undergraduate and graduate students (but no more than 50% of the team can be graduate students) are encouraged to apply. For more information visit the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Last year, Idaho State University students received the prize.
The U.S. Department of Energy, Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO), is pleased to announce the release their Fiscal Year 2012 Annual Report, showcasing GTO's project updates and key milestones, including the National Geothermal Data System (featured on page 12 of the report/14 of the PDF). The report can be found on the Geothermal Technologies Office website, or by following this link directly to the report.
Items in this month's update:
- NGDS Special Session at the Stanford Geothermal Workshop, February 11-13, 2013
- Updates from Contributors - Idaho Geological Survey released preliminary results from NGDS new data collection
Stanford Geothermal Workshop
The Stanford Geothermal Workshop is taking place February 11-13, 2013 at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center in Stanford, CA. Goals of the Workshop: to bring together engineers, scientists and managers involved in geothermal reservoir studies and developments; provide a forum for the exchange of ideas on the exploration, development and use of geothermal resources; and to enable prompt and open reporting of progress. Papers submitted to the workshop are made available online at the Program page. NGDS will have a special session to engage geothermal reservoir engineers and other potential end-users of the NGDS during the conference. Also available during the conference will be one-on-one sessions to perfect the User Interface of the NGDS.
The following presentations are part of Session 2(C) taking place on Monday, February 11th:
- "NGDS User Centered Design - Meeting the Needs of the Geothermal Community," Harold BLACKMAN, Suzanne BOYD, Kim PATTEN, Sam ZHENG [Abstract]
- "NGDS Geothermal Data Domain Assessment of Geothermal Community Data Needs," David BLACKWELL, Toni BOYD, Roland HORNE, Joe MOORE, Duan NICKULL, Stephen RICHARD, Lisa SHEVENELL [Abstract]
- "NGDS Node Deployment Adoption of CKAN for Domestic and International Data Deployment," Ryan CLARK, Christoph KUHMUENCH, Stephen RICHARD [Abstract]
- "DOE Geothermal Data Repository - an NGDS Node Designed for the Collection and Provision of DOE Geothermal RD&D Projects Data," Jon WEERS, Arlene ANDERSON [Abstract]
Full papers will be released prior to the conference. Links will be posted to this newsletter when they are available. Additional sessions, talks, abstracts, and papers are available at: https://pangea.stanford.edu/ERE/db/GeoConf/Schedule.php.
Updates from Contributors
Idaho Geological Survey: The Idaho Geological Survey and University of Idaho released initial assessments of new thermal gradient wells completed under the New Data Collection in the NGDS. This effort was geared towards providing the most accurate assessment of high-temperature geothermal energy potential in the region. "These new thermal gradient wells will provide the first accurate picture of the heat flow regime beneath this important volcanic province," said project leader John Welhan, Idaho Geological Survey research geologist. Three wells were completed in the Blackfoot-Gem Valley volcanic field of southeastern Idaho within an 18-mile radius of China Hat, a 60,000 year-old region of volcanic rock near Soda Springs, ID. A key part of the drilling project's success has been the ongoing geothermal data compilation effort for the NGDS as the availability of such data has allowed researchers to formulate hypotheses on the Blackfoot-Gem Valley volcanic field's geothermal potential that will be tested with the data acquired from the newly drilled wells. The next steps in the drilling program will be thermal profiling of the new wells, measuring the rocks' thermal properties and performing heat flow calculations. To read the full release, click here.
Arizona Geology, the magazine of the Arizona Geological Survey, published "Success Stories from the National Geothermal Data System" in the Winter Edition. To share your success story please email us.
Seeking Alpha, a financial and stock tracking website, released "Geothermal's Big 12 Events of 2012" by Herman Trabish, on December 18, 2012. Included in the list at number 7 was the Utah Geological Survey (UGS) discovery of a major sedimentary geothermal resource in the Black Rock Desert Basin as part of the new data collected under the Department of Energy-funded AASG State Geological Survey Contributions to the National Geothermal Data System. UGS released this news at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Geothermal Resources Council in early October, 2012. Additional information was included in the November eNews for the AASG project.
Text from the article:
"Seven: Utah Geological Survey testing discovered a new type of high-temperature energy reservoir in the Utah-Arizona-Nevada Black Rock desert basin that showed a potential equivalent to California’s Geysers, the Calpine Corp. (CPN) fields that produce a third of the world’s geothermal energy."
Updates for December:
- AASG Contributions Exceed 1 Million Wells in the NGDS
- Upcoming Regional Workshops
- DOE GTP Announces Several Vacancies
- Upcoming Events/Workshops of Interest
National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) Exceeds 1 Million Wells
NGDS has reached a major milestone with contributions from AASG members reaching nearly 1.2 million records related to oil and gas, water, or geothermal wells from across the 50 states. The well data is critical for aiding in exploration and development of the nation's geothermal energy resources and represent an invaluable resource for a variety of environmental, hydrological, and other natural resource uses. Each resource includes geographical coordinates, well status, total depth, and spud and end-of-drilling dates. Additional information for some of the wells include: borehole temperature, aqueous geochemistry, drillers logs, and geophysical logs. A press release was released on Tuesday, December 4, 2012 with the announcement during the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Also at AGU, the NGDS booth attracted a variety of visitors seeking additional information on geothermal exploration and requesting live demos of the data. Presentations at AGU included presentations by AASG State Geological Survey Contributions to the NGDS partners: Arizona Geological Survey, Connecticut Geological Survey, University of Hawaii, Indiana Geological Survey, Massachusetts Geological Survey, and the University of North Dakota.
Upcoming Regional Workshops
In conjunction with the AASG project hubs at Illinois Geological Survey, Kentucky Geological Survey, and Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology we'll be setting up a series of regional workshops for project participants this spring/summer. As more details become available, we'll post them to this news mailing and to this site.
DOE GTP Announces Several Vacancies
The Geothermal Technologies Program has posted several vacancy announcements for technical positions on www.USAJobs.gov. These include Supervisory Physical Scientist, Supervisory General Engineer, Physical Scientist, and General Engineer. To find out more about these positions visit www.USAJobs.gov and search for the Geothermal Technologies Program.
Upcoming Events/Workshops of Interest
The following is a list of events that may be of interest to AASG Contributors to the NGDS, with notes regarding NGDS related events. This list comprises the next two months of events only.
- ESIP Winter Meeting, January 8-10, 2013, Washington, D.C. ESIP Advancing Earth Science Information: From Climate Assessment to Intelligence to Action, Additional information is available at: http://www.esipfed.org/meetings
- Stanford Geothermal Workshop, February 11-13, 2013, Stanford, CA, A session on the NGDS and its multiple components is proposed at this conference; Additional information is available at https://pangea.stanford.edu/researchgroups/geothermal/stanford-geotherma...
- Ball State University Geothermal Conclave, February 11-13, 2013, Muncie, INC Systems Design, Installation, and Operations, Proposed NGDS sessions; Additional information is available at http://cms.bsu.edu/Academics/CentersandInstitutes/COTE/Sustainability/Co...
If you have an event you would like listed, or a success story you would like to share, please contact us. Happy Holidays to all!
A few exciting updates on the AASG Contributions to the NGDS project have occured over the last month.
New Tutorials/Resources for Data Delivery
There are new resources available to complement the revised AASG Repository. These include a step-by-step Repository Tutorial and a revised Data Delivery Cycle Tutorial. Specific questions or suggested improvements on the tutorials can be sent to our Technical Team.
Conference Participation and Exhibits
Congratulations to you all! Because of your efforts in submitting interoperable data, we received a Geothermal Resources Council Annual Meeting Best Presentation Award! The letter from Steve Ponder, Interim Executive Director of GRC states, "your presentation, A Geothermal Data System for Exploration and Development, was determined to be one of the best of 214 presentations at the 2012 GRC Annual Meeting in Reno, NV."
We had very successful booths at the Geothermal Resources Council/Geothermal Energy Association Annual Meeting & Expo and the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting (which we shared with the AASG). We look forward to sharing our work through our booth at the upcoming American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA from December 3-7, 2012. We'll also be presenting in H12F "Shallow and Deep Geothermal Systems: Characterization, Integration, Stimulation, Simulation, and Induced Seismicity II" with Video On-Demand capabilities. Project PI Lee Allison will present from 11:50am to 12:05pm in room 104 in Moscone South (if the GRC presentation is any indication, you won't want to miss this one!).
If you have an NGDS related presentation at AGU, please send us the information so that we can create a listing of presentations to distribute at the booth. You can also send us information on all NGDS related presentations regardless of presentation location, which we'll post to the project website. If you have reported a presentation on your quarterly report, you'll find the contributions listed at http://stategeothermaldata.org/state-outreach. We really like to share this information, so please send it.
Updates From Contributors
The Utah Geological Survey released the initial results of their work to discover a new type of geothermal energy resource in the Black Rock Basin of Utah. The work tested a new concept that high temperature geothermal resources might exist beneath young sedimentary basis. Preliminary results show that near-surface temperature gradients in the basin vary from about 60 degrees C/km (33 degrees F/1000 feet) to 100 degrees C/km (55 degrees F/1000 feet). This implies temperatures of 150 to 250 degrees C (300 to 500 degrees F) at 3 to 4 km depth (10,000 to 13,000 feet) beneath the basin. An abandoned oil exploration well drilled near Pavant Butte in the central part of the basin in 1981 confirms these exceptionally high temperatures. Seven of the nine holes were funded by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the AASG Supplemental Funding Project. The Salt Lake City Tribune featured the story on September 27, 2012 and the research was released on Monday, October 1, 2012 at the Geothermal Resources Council Annual Meeting. The Utah Geological Survey produced a video showing the work; it is available for viewing on the UGS Blog.
The University of Hawaii, which is conducting the data collection efforts for the state of Hawaii, has digitized approximately 1,000 geothermal documents and made them available on the University's respository (and provided metadata to the NGDS of course!). To date, nearly 10,000 downloads have occured by approximately 6,000 viewers. In addition, approximately 3,500 water wells have been digitized and include groundwater and geochemistry data. Benefits of this work include the State's Commission on Water Resources Management transitioning to an entirely E-Document system for oversight and permitting and perhaps most significantly, a state-wide assessment of geothermal resources through a sequence of magnetotelluric surveys (independently funded from this project). Having access to the digitized data will tremendously enhance the ability to interpret and analyze the MT datasets. In Hawaii, the NGDS project has stimulated cooperation between key players in geothermal development, provided enhanced accessibility to a broad suite of data relevant to geothermal resources, and galvanized new projects on geothermal exploration. This is critical to Hawaii's energy portfolio since Hawaii currently has the nation's highest electricity costs due to its use of oil (which has very high transportation costs to HI) as the primary fuel source.
If you have a story you'd like to share about the AASG Contributions to the NGDS, please send it our way.
Thanks, as always, for your contributions!
The National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) and State Geological Survey Contributions to the NGDS will be presenting oral talks and exhibiting at the upcoming Geothermal Resources Council Annual Meeting and Geothermal Energy Association Expo taking place in Reno, NV at the Peppermill Resort and Casino from September 30 to October 3, 2012. Information on the Annual Meeting, including a Technical Program can be downloaded at http://geothermal.org/meet-new.html; information on the Expo can be found at http://www.geothermalenergy2012.com/
NGDS (and related) Booths
The State Geological Survey Contributions will be displayed at booth 341. The booth will incorporate a recorded demonstration of data currently available and provide a few use cases, such as a search for borehole temperature data at a certain temperature and depth using ArcMap. Other demonstrations include customized applications that are interoperable with the data and information on the new data collection projects currently taking place.
The NGDS booth is at 540.
The Geo-Heat Center, a contributor to the NGDS, booth is at 124 and 126.
The Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Program booth is at 610 and 612.
NGDS Talks
Monday, October 1 in Naples 7
1:30 pm A Geothermal Data System for Exploration and Development, Allison, M. Lee, et. al.
1:50 pm National Geothermal Data System, DOE Geothermal Data Repository, Anderson, Arlene, et. al.
If you are presenting a poster or talk related to work funded by the NGDS please contact kim.patten@azgs.az.gov so that we can include it in this list, our booth documents, and advertising.
We are excited to announce that we will be presenting "Implementing USGIN, a Distributed Network for the Geosciences" at the ESIP Federation Summer Meeting in Madison, WI on July 17, 2012. Registration is available for both virtual participation and live participation at this event.
The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is a broad-based, distributed community of data and information technology practitioners who come together to collaborate on coordinated interoperability efforts across Earth science communities. We look forward to participating in this event and look forward to seeing you at the workshop.
Pages
Mailing List
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy under award DE-EE0002850 to the Arizona Geological Survey acting on behalf of the Association of American State Geologists.
 |
 |
 |
 |
