Online Databases of Geologic Formations of Asia and Africa, with Display onto Plate Reconstructions for Any Time Horizon
- 1Geologic TImeScale Foundation, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA (gabiogg@hotmail.com)
- 2Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
- 3EarthByte Group, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
- 4IUGS Deep-time Digital Earth Research Center of Excellence (Suzhou), Kunshan (Jiangsu), China
- 5Institute of Sedimentary Geology, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610059, China
- 6IUGS Deep-Time Digital Earth, Rajahmundry 533105, Andhra Pradesh, India
- 7Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing, IN 100037
Two goals of the Paleogeography Working Group of the Deep-Time Digital Earth (DDE) program of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) are: (1) to interconnect national databases for all geologic formations, and to compile new online "lexicons" for countries that currently lack these; (2) to display the merged paleogeographic output for any time interval of these distributed databases onto appropriate plate tectonic reconstructions.
Therefore, we have worked with regional and time-period experts to compile cloud-based lexicon databases for Asian and for select African regions. The new databases are currently completed for the Precambrian through Phanerozoic of Asia (ca. 4000 geologic formations as of March 2023) and of a part of Africa (Niger, ca. 200 formations). In addition to standard search criteria (age, region, lithology keywords, etc.), the user interfaces include map-based and stratigraphic-column navigation. The returned entries be displayed by-age or in alphabetical order. Many of the formation details include GeoJSON-formatted polygons of its regional extent. These enable plotting of the individual formations filled with their appropriate lithologic facies patterns onto any of three proposed plate reconstruction models with a single click. Or, if a geologic age is specified, a user can query all the linked regional databases to plot the locations of all formations (with lithologic facies patterns) that span that age onto a plate reconstruction model.
Our team is currently working with the teams at Macrostrat (Univ. Wisconsin (Madison) and at One-Stratigraphy (DDE, IUGS) and with other geologic surveys to interlink their regional facies-time compilations for other global regions. The goal is to users to access the information on any geologic formation, and to obtain a view of the sediments and volcanics that were accumulating at any time on the ancient Earth.
How to cite: Ogg, G., Chang, S., Du, W., Ogg, J., Mishra, S., Zahirovic, S., Ault, A., Mamallapalli, O., Li, H., and Hou, H.: Online Databases of Geologic Formations of Asia and Africa, with Display onto Plate Reconstructions for Any Time Horizon, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-3648, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-3648, 2023.
