About EarthChem

Mission:

EarthChem is a community-driven effort to facilitate the preservation, discovery, access and visualization of the widest and richest geochemical datasets possible.

Overview:

Background: EarthChem was founded as a consortium in 2003 by members of the igneous rock database projects PetDB, GEOROC and NAVDAT (Rick Carlson, Carnegie Institution of Washington; Albrecht Hofmann, Max-Planck-Institute fuer Chemie, Germany; Kerstin Lehnert, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University; Doug Walker, University of Kansas). The consortium's goal was to nurture synergies among the projects, minimize duplication of effort, and share tools and approaches.

In 2005, EarthChem was funded by the National Science Foundation to establish an advanced data management system that will facilitate the compilation, communication, serving, and analysis of the widest range of geochemical data.

Discovery, Access, & Visualization: EarthChem's web portal offers distributed searches across a federation of geochemical databases for easy discovery and accessibility of geochemical data. A prototype has been released in August 2006 that allows distributed queries to PetDB, NAVDAT, and GEOROC. In the next development phase, sedimentary data from SedDB, GeoStratSys, and Pangaea will be included in the distributed searches. The EarthChem portal features standardized and integrated data output format, map interfaces, and tools for data quality assessment and data analysis and visualization.

Preservation: Efforts to enhance the preservation of geochemical data (legacy and future data) are threefold: (a) development of procedures and tools for data submission including a 'Digital Lab Book' to encourage data contributions by the community, (b) compilation of new datasets by EarthChem personnel, (c) assistance to investigators who want to build new datasets. These efforts are accompanied by a vital outreach component, including workshops, town hall meetings, and exhibits, to engage the community, organizations, and journals in defining and implementing standards for data publication, data documentation, and data citation. Please, check EarthChem News for upcoming events.

Project Management:

The EarthChem project is a collaboration of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and the University of Kansas, executed cooperatively with the Kansas Geological Survey. Principal investigators are Kerstin Lehnert (LDEO) and Doug Walker (Kansas). At Lamont, EarthChem is managed as part of the Geoinformatics for Geochemistry Program, an integrated system of data management projects that develop, maintain and operate digital geochemical data collections.