Geoscientific information can be both rich and complex, and content is not always readily interpretable by either humans or machines. Interpretation of such information is important if it is to be shared, exchanged, integrated or used by advanced third-party applications as would be required in an interoperable context.

This session will explore the meaning of geoscientific information and knowledge and may include:
•how meaning can be represented using ontologies or other semantic mechanisms;
•how representations of meaning can be used in an interoperable context to allow information to be shared;
•how representations of meaning can be used in applications (for example, for discovery and analysis);
•how knowledge can be abstracted, interpreted and inferred from semantic representations and data and information repositories.

Those who attended the 2008 session may also remember the beginnings of an interesting discussion about how to create a repository for ontologies in order to manage and govern their proliferation (to avoid duplication and advance knowledge of ontologies that are being created around the world). If there is interest, we may include a slot to further this discussion.

Interested presenters are invited to submit abstracts for oral or poster presentation on any aspects relevant to these topics. Please submit abstracts through the EGU web site (http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2009/) by 13 January 2009. General information about the assembly is available at http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2009.

Any questions should be directed to the conveners of this session Kristin Stock (kristin.stock@nottingham.ac.uk), Peter Fox (pfox@cs.rpi.edu) and Sandro Fiore (sandro.fiore@unile.it).