HR: 16:00h
AN: IN44A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: CHRONOS: Geoinformatics Platform for Global Geosciences
AU: * Cervato, C
EM: cinzia@iastate.edu
AF: Iowa State University - CHRONOS, Dept. of Geological & Atmosph. Sciences, Ames, IA 50011 United States
AU: Fils, D
EM: fils@chronos.org
AF: Iowa State University - CHRONOS, Dept. of Geological & Atmosph. Sciences, Ames, IA 50011 United States
AU: Bohling, G
EM: geoff@kgs.ku.edu
AF: Kansas Geological Survey, 1630 Constant Ave., Lawrence, KS 66047 United States
AU: Diver, P
EM: divdat@aol.com
AF: DivDat Consulting - CHRONOS, 1392 Madison 6200, Wesley, AR 72773 United States
AU: Greer, D
EM: dsg@sdsc.edu
AF: San Diego Supercomputer Center, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093 United States
AU: Lambi, B
EM: blambi@iastate.edu
AF: Iowa State University - CHRONOS, Dept. of Geological & Atmosph. Sciences, Ames, IA 50011 United States
AU: Reed, J A
EM: jareed@iastate.edu
AF: Iowa State University - CHRONOS, Dept. of Geological & Atmosph. Sciences, Ames, IA 50011 United States
AU: Tang, X
EM: xytang@iastate.edu
AF: Iowa State University - CHRONOS, Dept. of Geological & Atmosph. Sciences, Ames, IA 50011 United States
AB: Layered sedimentary rocks are a vast, globally distributed, information repository for the history of Earth processes, spanning billions of years, holding the answers to many scientific and societal questions. Traditionally, we have tried to capture this information in the printed literature where the data sets, by the nature of the medium, are incomplete. Furthermore, it is an expensive and time-consuming process for subsequent researchers to extract this information from the literature. The answer to this "information bottleneck" is geoinformatics, a revolution that is migrating information to more readily retrievable electronic formats. CHRONOS (www.chronos.org) is a community facility that addresses the geoinformatics needs of sedimentary geology and paleobiology, emphasizes global correlation and time-series analysis, and directly supports cutting-edge research on topics that include the evolution and diversity of life, climate change, geochemical cycles, paleoceanography, and many other aspects of the Earth system. CHRONOS is providing an open, community-based geoinformatics platform for storing, accessing, and analyzing sedimentary geological, geochemical, and paleobiological data. By augmenting and connecting community databases and giving them an unprecedented level of interoperability, CHRONOS will realize a virtual, on-line, electronic stratigraphic record - a means to boost the pace and enlarge the scope of integrative geoscience. The full CHRONOS system includes a core Information Technology (IT) facility and databases, a global network of federated databases, tools, targeted development projects, and education/outreach activities. CHRONOS and its partners cooperate to: 1) link existing databases and other geoinformatics components into a single interoperable network, 2) provide primary databases to capture relevant data types, 3) offer tool sets for data analysis, and 4) create working groups and organize workshops to ensure that the needs of the community are met. Whereas no single facility can encompass all the data types needed for all of Earth sciences, nor provide all the analytical tools necessary to work with and synthesize these data, we are developing a facility that addresses many of these needs, that interoperates with other data collections, and is connected to a national geoinformatics and computational grid (GEONGrid).
UR: http://www.chronos.org
DE: 0430 Computational methods and data processing
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005