Stratigraphy.net - a perspective on networking stratigraphic information

Stratigraphy is a core discipline of the geological sciences. Understanding the order in which units of rock were emplaced is the key to understanding the geological history of an area of interest. A common task for earth scientists is the search for stratigraphic background information on a certain rock unit, e.g. its age and properties and its position within the hierarchy of stratigraphic units.

Since stratigraphy is an interdisciplinary approach to geology, a knowledge base which is capable to link a wide variety of detail data of any of these disciplines is needed to encounter the needs of modern geosciences. For example, detailed information on taxonomy and systematic biology are required for a sufficient understanding of biostratigraphic units.

Often enough the scarcity of available data requires a multi-proxy approach to produce robust and detailed information on the stratigraphic position of the unit studied. In addition, our stratigraphic knowledge evolves, new standard curves are published and dates are being revised. This requires that current stratigraphic information is available and that old interpretations can be matched to modern stratigraphies. Dedicated databases provide a lot of this information, but to combine all this information, database interoperability is the task ahead.

With this newly launched version of Snet we hope to meet this challenge

Stratigraphy.net is a founding member of iGeoinfo