THE GEOCHEMICAL EARTH REFERENCE MODEL (GERM): CREATING AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE IN GEOCHEMISTRY

Geochemistry, like many other earth science disciplines, is in the very earliest stages of embracing Information Technology (IT) . If successful, geochemistry stands to reap substantial benefits from involving IT, in particular with respect to data access, and data archiving, and modeling. This will ultimately help bridging the gap between geochemical disciplines and between geochemistry and other earth science disciplines. The Geochemical Earth Reference Model (GERM) initiative http://earthref.org/GERM/) recognizes this potential and provides a scientific focus for the development of an integrating IT infrastructure in geochemistry. We will discuss the GERM initiative and the associated EarthRef initiative as grass–roots efforts that work with the geochemistry community towards the establishment of a global geochemical information system. We will discuss how GERM has advanced towards supplying important earth reference data to the community and making very diverse geochemical disciplines more transparent to each other. We will present GERM as a case study, and how it had to resolve many scientific and technical problems that need to be addressed before an effective GERM can be built. GERM uses workshops to define a scientific vision and the scholarly principles behind a GERM data base. These workshops were also used to obtain community support to establish and disseminate standardized electronic data and metadata publication methods. GERM worked on resolving copyright issues involved in the posting of published data and the seamless transition between electronic data publication and database activity. While much of the above still is in progress, EarthRef.org and GERM made much progress in applying recent advances in data publication methods to establish the basic infrastructure for its website. We will discuss these advances and how we involve the community in the data ingestion process. We will draw parallels betweengeochemistry and other earth science disciplines and discuss how the reference model approach may be useful for these communities as well.