THE OCEAN DRILLING AND LAMONT-DOHERTY VISUAL CORE DESCRIPTIONS IN MODERN DATABASE/GIS: ILLUSTRATED USES

The seafloor visual core descriptions of the Ocean Drilling Program (DSDP, ODP and IODP phases) have been brought into modern database format and standards. The same operation was done with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) seafloor core collection of 14,000 piston and gravity cores worldwide. Computational methods of the dbSEABED database were used, which previously had integrated over 2 million seafloor descriptions for a global mapping of the seafloor sediment/rock substrates.

The methods included: (i) assembly of data resources, (ii) breaking the descriptions into the observational units and fine layers; (iii) applying linguistic tools such as replacing words and clichés with tokens (into clean, controlled language), (iv) application of a dictionary/thesaurus which gives meanings in fuzzy set theory, (v) error trapping and QAQC filtering, (vi) creation of file set suited to use in GIS, RDMS and other software applications.

We show several applications of this data: (i) relational database queries to narrowly select samples, (ii) graphical core logs for publication, (iii) ocean-basin cross-sections of sediment facies and components by chronostratigraphy, (iii) data analysis/visualization of the stratigraphic records for colour, components, features, (iv) exploration of the data using advanced applications such as GeoMapApp and Google Earth.

The data are now publicly available as release 1.0, and will be updated as the work is refined. I acknowledge Bill Ryan of Columbia University for discussions and support; also the Consortium of Ocean Leadership.