Geoscience analysis is currently limited by cumbersome access and manipulation of large datasets from remote sources. Due to their data-heavy and compute-light nature, these analysis workloads represent a class of applications unsuited to a computational grid optimized for compute-intensive applications. We present the Script Workflow Analysis for Multiprocessing (SWAMP) system, which relocates data-intensive workflows from scientists' workstations to the hosting datacenters in order to reduce data transfer and exploit locality. Our colocation of computation and data leverages the typically reductive characteristics of these workflows, allowing SWAMP to complete workflows in a fraction of the time and with much less data transfer. We describe SWAMP's implementation and interface, which is designed to leverage scientists' existing script-based workflows. Tests with a production geoscience workflow show drastic improvements not only in overall execution time, but in computation time as well. SWAMP's workflow analysis capability allows it to detect dependencies, optimize I/O, and dynamically parallelize execution. Benchmarks quantify the drastic reduction in transfer time, computation time, and end-to-end execution time. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.