TheCHRONOSSystem: geoinformatics forsedimentary geology and paleobiology*
Cinzia Cervato, W.S. Snyder, Geoffrey C. Bohling, Christian Loepp, Xiaoyun Tang · 2005
Traditionally, scientists havecaptured dataon thehistory ofEarthprocesses intheprinted literature wherethedatasets, bythenature ofthe medium,areincomplete. Theanswertothis bottleneck isgeoinformatics, a revolution thatismigrating information tomore readily retrievable electronic formats.The CHRONOS Systemisacommunity facility that addresses thegeoinformatics needsofsedimentary geology andpaleobiology, emphasizes global correlation andtime-series analysis, anddirectly supports cutting-edge research on topics that include theevolution anddiversity oflife, climate change, geochemical cycles, andmanyother aspects oftheEarthsystem. TheCHRONOS Systemprovides simultaneous andseamless integration ofhosted andfederated databases with analytical and visualization tools. CHRONOS exploits software advances for translating between different datastructures and terminologies toachieve interoperability within a distributed datamanagement system.