SedDB Rationale

There are important reasons why sediment geochemistry urgently needs advanced data management:

• Sediment geochemistry is of fundamental importance to a wide range of fields in the Earth sciences. Paleoclimate research and the anthropogenic influence on the environment, for example, are of increasing importance to society. Sediment is subducted into the deep Earth, and plays a major role in convergent margin magmatism, volatile cycling, and mantle evolution, and thus is essential for any comprehensive understanding of the Earth System. 
   
• Acquisition of data is rapidly increasing due to improved sampling techniques and faster, often automated analytical procedures. 
   
• The traditional way of disseminating data simply through publication as data tables in the scientific literature is no longer adequate and hampers efficient use of data:
  • Data are widely dispersed in journals and data archives, and researchers must compile them individually, table by table, or even by inputting the data sample by sample, into data sets that fit their needs. Digital catalogs and electronic data supplements only partly alleviate the time burden shared by everyone involved in large-scale data evaluation.
  • Many publications contain only “representative” data or only show the data in diagrams due to journal space restrictions. This has led to a serious restriction of data access for PIs, and precludes the opportunity to test and evaluate hypotheses and apply new data analysis methods to existing data. This is particularly true in the sediment literature, in which downcore studies often include thousands of samples. 
    
• Limited publication of data due to journal space limitations has resulted in the permanent loss of much valuable data. Some of these data might be not reproducible, for example, if the sample was used up, and regeneration of other data requires expending substantial resources.