SEDIMENTARY PROVENANCE STUDIES USING A FREE ONLINE GEOCHEMICAL DATABASE: BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER WITH SEDDB

Sedimentary provenance studies demand significant data sets for hypothesis testing and verification. Often, researchers must manually compile these data from the literature or from databases offering flat files without any data integration. With the advent of the geochemical database SedDB (www.SedDB.org), data that previously would have taken days, or even weeks, to compile can now be downloaded to ones desktop within minutes. SedDB contains a full range of analytical values for sediment samples, primarily from marine sediment cores, for a plethora of materials from bulk sediment, to organic and inorganic components, leachates, size fractions and pore waters. The database contains over 305,000 individual chemical values from nearly 6000 cores from 279 references, and is continuously growing. Provenance indicators that can be gleaned from SedDB include: bulk sediment isotopes, REEs, chemistry of eolian fractions, and down-core lithology.

SedDB was created with the vision of having an impact in the sedimentary community similar to that which PetDB has had on the understanding of MORB composition. Prior to PetDB, MORB estimates were based on either an idealized composition and/or a small number of samples. Similarly, SedDB will allow for expansive studies of sedimentary sources, sinks and fluxes based on far bigger data sets than were previously available on both local, regional, and global scales. Applications of SedDB data to provenance studies will be shown.