ABSTRACT

Extending Ocean Drilling Pursuits (eODP) will build a unified scientific ocean drilling database system based on stratigraphy, or the age and environment of sedimentary deposition. The project will establish an accessible repository of stratigraphic and microfossil data by linking the meta-stratigraphic data. eODP will link and enhance three existing database structures: Open Core Data (OCD), the Paleobiology Database, and Macrostrat to facilitate curation, access, and visualization of large microfossil and marine stratigraphic datasets. eODP data will be served to the mobile app Flyover Country, to explain the importance of significant sites. A search function will search for time interval, lithology, taxon, or fossil preservation, allowing users to quickly find useful sections upon which to construct geochemical records. The project will also broaden participation of female and underrepresented minority students in science. Minority high school girls in Academy's Women In Natural Sciences (WINS) program will attend a geology and paleontology field course, with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of minority women who pursue college degrees and careers in the geosciences.

Sediment cores recovered over the past 50 years have provided a record of deep sea microfossil assemblages and their evolution and has documented changes in sedimentation from around the world. Entering these microfossil groups into the PBDB will allow biodiversity studies, for example, on robust species-level records. Depositional environments that are stable and continuous on million-year timescales permit investigations into how the largest biome on the planet survives through environmental shifts, vital to understanding the challenges ahead of humanity. Large-scale stratigraphic projects will be able to study controls on oceanic sedimentation and relate this to climate, tectonics, and primary production trends over several million years. eODP will augment existing Macrostrat schema to allow for additional age-diagnostic criteria and populate Macrostrat with shipboard ocean drilling lithostratigraphy and age models from OCD. PBDB will be populated with shipboard microfossil occurrences from OCD and the project will develop user interfaces for PBDB and Macrostrat to enable data entry and download of all eODP data.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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