Seongjin Park*
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
Barbara Carrapa#
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
Mihai N. Ducea
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA, and Faculty of Geology and Geophysics,
University of Bucharest, 010041, Bucharest, Romania
Mihai Surdeanu
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
Robert Hayes
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
Dan Collins
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
Abstract
A common challenge in science is the human capability to evaluate the real impact of an
observation and a data set. This is a complex task due to having only partial information and/or
to the complexity of the problem, requiring different fields to be combined. In order to
overcome these important limitations, we need to be able to review all the available data and
interpretations. This would allow us to evaluate the global distribution of a specific process
or phenomenon of interest. The increasing number of scientific publications prevents scientists
from being able to keep up with all the available literature especially when scientific papers
cross disciplines. These challenges prevent us from evaluating the global impact of a certain
process and are particularly relevant today given the impact of our scientific assessment on one
of the most pressing issues of our time, which is climate change and its impact on society. We
present here an application of artificial intelligence to geosciences: We conduct a systematic
analysis of geoscience literature through a hybrid machine-human approach. Such applications are
more common in other fields such as biomedicine and are in their infancy in the geosciences
because of various difficulties the machines encounter in parsing geologic literature. We
describe here some of these limitations and how we overcame them. We then use the following case
study as an example to test our approach: We ask whether climate is influenced by volcanism in
the geologic past. Our case study results show, as expected, that most analyzed literature in
this experiment conclude that volcanism influences climate change in deep time, but there is no
complete consensus on this question. Similarly, any question of potential global significance,
such as the impact of human activities on climate change, can be posed as an interrogating
technique for our vast and fast-growing literature in the field of geosciences. Such an approach
has the potential to be applied to a variety of complex problems, hence addressing some of the
major limitations with cross-disciplinary research.
*This author is currently affiliated with Educational Testing Service.
#Corresponding author: bcarrapa@arizona.edu
Manuscript received 16 Nov. 2021. Revised manuscript received 6 May 2022.
Manuscript accepted 23 May 2022. Posted 6 July 2022.
© The Geological Society of America, 2022. CC-BY-NC.
https://doi.org/10.1130/GSATG528A.1