AUGMENTING THE PALEO-STRAT INTERVAL CONSTRUCTION AND ANALYSIS TOOL (PSICAT) WITH CHRONOS SYSTEM SERVICES

PSICAT is a stand-alone tool for creating and viewing stratigraphic columns from drill cores and outcrops. Because of the nature of the fieldwork, it is important that PSICAT be fully functional without a network connection. However, when a network connection is present, such as after the initial fieldwork or when used by end users, PSICAT utilizes the extensive services provided by CHRONOS's innovative eXtensible Query Engine (XQE) system (http://portal.chronos.org/gridsphere/gridsphere?cid=search_datasearch&JavaScript=enabled). The XQE provides a simple and easy way to expose all types of data and other services to external entities. PSICAT will utilize CHRONOS's data services to query and retrieve data from the various databases in the CHRONOS System. It will make use of the computing services provided by CHRONOS to perform complex analysis and plotting of data. Furthermore, the data generated by PSICAT during the building of stratigraphic columns will be uploaded into the CHRONOS System using its storage services. This creates a situation of ever-evolving stratigraphic column diagrams. Because they are stored in the CHRONOS System, they can be retrieved anytime by anyone. And as more data become available, they can be plotted and analyzed with respect to the stratigraphic columns. The PSICAT tool is being initially developed for use by the ANDRILL project (http://www.andrill.org/) on their upcoming drilling expedition in Antarctica, but will also be available to the general community. After the initial testing with ANDRILL, we will expand PSICAT to contain a wider array of features and allow access to all the data stored and federated in the CHRONOS System.