East African Rift Tephra Database [EARThD]: a compilation documenting and analyzing explosive volcanism in East Africa
Abstract
East African sedimentary records containing tephra have typically been studied in isolation by researchers from different disciplines, and in most cases, there is very little cross-disciplinary communication. This makes it difficult to navigate through relevant literature from different disciplines and strongly limits the use of tephra deposits at their maximum potential. In order for these disparate disciplines to integrate and fully utilize the growing number of regional tephra datasets, infrastructural efforts that centralize information are required.
EARThD is a NSF funded data compilation project that seeks to integrate, standardize, and investigate tephra datasets from the tectonically and volcanically active East African Rift (EAR) focusing on the past approximately 5 million year record. Extensive literature data mining efforts supervised by the PIs and supplemented through community involvement will identify references from different disciplines documenting collected tephra occurrences and analyses. Led by an undergraduate student workforce, datasets and associated metadata will be entered and formatted using standardized templates through IEDA (i.e., the Petrological Database (PetDB) template). Data will be easily searchable and accessed through the IEDA EarthChem portal and the GeoMappApp science exploration and visualization application. The EARThD website (https://sites.psu.edu/earthd/) is set to document project progress, offer a venue for community input, and provide simple instructions and direct links for searching, accessing, and downloading EARThD datasets.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.V23I0162M
- Keywords:
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- 0498 General or miscellaneous;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1039 Alteration and weathering processes;
- GEOCHEMISTRYDE: 1065 Major and trace element geochemistry;
- GEOCHEMISTRYDE: 1914 Data mining;
- INFORMATICS