TOOL FOR MICROSCOPIC IDENTIFICATION (TMI) TEACHES YOU SMEAR SLIDES, PLANT MACROFOSSILS, MORE

Detailed lithologic core description supports the growing reuse of curated lacustrine and marine sedimentary sequences, and builds a facies framework for interdisciplinary and multiproxy studies. TMI, Tool for Microscopic Identification, has developed under new NSF-EAR-Geoinformatics funding from an online reference for the identification of microscopic minerals and mineraloids in petrographic smear slides to a training tool covering a wider variety of sedimentary components. Tutorials written by subject matter experts are designed to help researchers with a range of skill levels build capacity in new subdisciplines. A collection of >250 photographs of common terrestrial and aquatic plant macrofossils found in lake sediments improves not only paleoenvironmental interpretation but identification of radiocarbon-dateable material, and a tutorial offers recommendations on seeds to be avoided. Tutorials have also been added for basic smear slide analysis and silicate and carbonate mineral identification. A dynamic search interface using Microsoft PivotViewer filters the entire image collection by component attributes and core metadata, improving visual search and identification usability. Interoperation with resources such as Neotoma and CoreWall Suite are under active development. We encourage researchers to contribute images and data so that TMI can be expanded even further, to better serve the interdisciplinary paleoenvironmental sediment research community.