Georoc

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GEOROC (Geochemistry of Rocks of the Oceans and Continents) is a geochemical database that is freely available on the internet and is being created at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz under the direction of Bärbel Sarbas. The database represents an extensive collection of published analyzes of volcanic and mantle xenolites . It contains main and trace element concentrations , radiogenic and stable isotope ratios as well as analytical ages for total rocks , glasses, minerals and inclusions. In addition to the chemical analyzes, the samples are characterized by extensive metadata. These include, among other things, geographical location with longitude and latitude, rock class and type, degree and type of alteration, analytical method, laboratory and measurements on reference materials. Each record is linked to the original reference.

content

As of April 2013, the database contained more than nine million analytical values ​​for approximately 340,000 rock samples. The data come from around 11,000 publications. The samples come from eleven different geological environments.

Web interface

The web interface of the database offers the following query options:

  1. Bibliography (author name and / or year of publication)
  2. Geological milieu (ocean islands, seamounts, oceanic plateaus, submarine ridges, continental or oceanic flood basalts, archaic greenstone belts, volcanic island arcs, rift zones, intracontinental zones and complex, not clearly definable educational environments)
  3. Geography (location name (s), longitude and latitude, Google Maps)
  4. Chemistry (chemical elements, isotope ratios)
  5. Petrography (rock class, rock name, modal composition, sample name)

The result of a query is displayed as an HTML table; it can also be downloaded in CSV data format and then processed further on the client computer. The result of a query always contains a list of the publications from which the selected data originate.

In addition to the dynamic queries, the criteria of which can be defined by the user, there are also so-called precompiled data sets. These contain all data available in GEOROC for a specific location, a rock type or a mineral type.

Data entry

At the moment, the data is entered by employees of the database group at the MPI for Chemistry in Mainz. For the future it is planned to create a browser-based input mode for the authors of the publications so that they can enter the data relevant for GEOROC themselves.

Cooperations

The GEOROC database is based on the same database structure as the PetDB databases of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) (Lehnert et al. 2000). Later other databases were added that also use this structure: NAVDAT , SedDB and MetPetDB. GEOROC is, together with PetDB and NAVDAT, a member of the database consortium EarthChem . Data from these three databases and other data collections can be queried and downloaded via a shared web interface.

The data in GEOROC is linked to the GeoReM database , a database of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry for geological, environmentally relevant and biological reference materials.

The GEOROC database server is administered by the Society for Scientific Data Processing GWDG in Göttingen.

literature

  • Lehnert, KA, Su, Y., Langmuir, CH, Sarbas, B., Nohl, U .: A global geochemical database structure for rocks , G-CUBED, Volume 1, 2000, doi : 10.1029 / 1999GC000026 .

Web links