GSA Abstracts

Discussion of available stratigraphic resources: the Australian Stratigraphic Units Database (ASUD); documentation of procedures for modifying existing units or establishing new ones; contact details for the Australian Stratigraphy Commission members and ASUD staff. Suggestions on ways of raising awareness through modern media such as a podcast or app, and a request for feedback on what sort of approach might appeal to a university student audience.

OZCHEM is AGSO's national whole-rock geochemical database (previously known as ROCKCHEM). This documentation explains the database structure and includes definitions of the database tables and columns (attributes). It is provided with all purchases of OZCHEM data, but can also be purchased separately. The documentation includes summaries and highlights of all the regional data sets that comprise OZCHEM.

GeoSciML is the international standard for transfer of digital geological maps and relational database data. GeoSciML was developed over the past decade by the IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI), and was adopted as an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard in June 2016. Ratification as an official OGC standard marked a coming of age for GeoSciML - it now meets the highest standards for documentation and current best practice for interoperable data transfer. GeoSciML is the preferred standard for geoscience data sharing initiatives worldwide, such as OneGeology, the European INSPIRE directive, the Australian Geoscience Portal, and the US Geoscience Information Network (USGIN). GeoSciML is also used by OGC's GroundwaterML data standard [1] and CGI's EarthResourceML standard [2]. Development of GeoSciML version 4 learnt considerably from user experiences with version 3.2, which was released in 2013 [3]. Although the GeoSciML v3 data model was conceptually sound, its XML schema implementation was considered overly complex for the general user. Version 4 developments focussed strongly on designing simpler XML schemas that allow data providers and users to interact with data at various levels of complexity. As a result, GeoSciML v4 provides three levels of user experience - 1. simple map portrayal, 2. GeoSciML-Basic for common age and lithology data for geological features, and 3. GeoSciML-Extended, which extends GeoSciML-Basic to deliver more detailed and complex relational data. Similar to GeoSciML v3, additional GeoSciML v4 schemas also extend the ISO Observations & Measurements standard to cover geological boreholes, sampling, and analytical measurements. The separate levels of GeoSciML also make it easier for software vendors to develop capabilities to consume relatively simple GeoSciML data without having to deal with the full range of complex GeoSciML schemas. Previously mandatory elements of GeoSciML, that were found to be overly taxing on users in version 3, are now optional in version 4. GeoSciML v4 comes with Schematron validation scripts which can be used by user communities to create profiles of GeoSciML to suit their particular community needs. For example, the European INSPIRE community has developed Schematrons for web service validation which require its users to populate otherwise-optional GeoSciML-Basic elements, and to use particular community vocabularies for geoscience terminology. Online assistance for data providers to use GeoSciML is now better than ever, with user communities such as OneGeology, INSPIRE, and USGIN providing user guides explaining how to create simple and complex GeoSciML web services. CGI also provides a range of standard vocabularies that can be used to populate GeoSciML data services. Full documentation and user guides are at www.geosciml.org.

Marine science is expensive. Duplication of research activities is potentially money wasted. Not being aware of other marine science studies could question the validity of findings made in single-discipline studies. A simple means of discovery is needed. The development of Earth Browsers (principally Google Earth) and KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files offer a possible solution. Google Earth is easy to use, and KML files are relatively simple, ASCII, XML-tagged files that can encode locations (points, lines and polygons), relevant metadata for presentation in descriptive 'balloons', and links to digital sources (data, publications, web-pages, etc). A suite of studies will be presented showing how information relating to investigations at a point (e.g. observation platform), along a line (e.g. ship borne survey) or over a region (e.g. satellite imagery) can be presented in a small (10 Kbyte) file. The information will cover a range of widely used data types including seismic data, underwater video, image files, documents and spreadsheets. All will be sourced directly from the web and can be downloaded from within the browser to one's desktop for analysis with appropriate applications. To be useful, this methodology requires data and metadata to be properly managed; and a degree of cooperation between major marine science organizations which could become 'sponsors' of the principal marine science disciplines (i.e oceanography, marine biology, geoscience). This need not be a complex task in many cases. The partitioning of the sciences is not important, so long as the information is being managed effectively and their existence is widely advertised. KML files provide a simple way of achieving this. The various discipline-based KML files could be hosted by an umbrella organization such as the AODCJF, enabling it to become a 'one-stop-shop' for marine science data.

Codes, guidelines, and standard practices for naming and describing Australian stratigraphic units have been discussed for more than 60 years since the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) set up a Research Committee on Stratigraphic Nomenclature in 1946. Like today's Australian Stratigraphy Commission, its aims were 'to encourage the orderly use of names and definitions for stratigraphic units'. .......

Part-page item of matters related to stratigraphy. This column discusses informal units, the role of authors and reviewers, and is the 50th Stratigraphic Column produced by the Australian Stratigraphy Commission. Journal ISSN 0312 4711

Part-page article on matters relating to Australian stratigraphy. This column discusses what constitutes a publication for the purpose of establishing and formalising stratigrphic units. ISSN: 0312 4711

part-page item on matters related to the Australian Stratigraphy Commission and the Australian Stratigraphic Units Database. This column explains international connections and reviews several recent relevant articles.

The Australian Stratigraphic Units Database (ASUD) is the lexicon of Australian stratigraphy, maintained by Geoscience Australia on behalf of the Australian Stratigraphy Commission (ASC). Initiated in 1949 as the Australian Central Register of Stratigraphic Names, the ASUD became a digital database in 1979, and is now accessible through the Geoscience Australia website (http://www.ga.gov.au/products-services/data-applications/reference-databases/stratigraphic-units.html) with search capabilities on attributes such as name, rank, age, state, and geological province. The ASC includes representatives from all Australian states and territories (generally government geologists) who work together to maintain the consistency, accuracy and currency of information in the database. This includes resolving stratigraphic differences across political borders and between researchers to maintain it as a truly authoritative national resource. The database is continually updated with information collated from all publications that describe Australian stratigraphic units, including journal articles and Geological Survey maps and publications. Where possible, data quality within the ASUD is enforced by codelists (eg, rank, lithology, age, age determination method, relationship types). Information includes unit definitions, currency, rank, location, age, lithologies, composition, and environment of formation. It also includes relationships with other units (eg, overlying, intruding, correlated units), hierarchy (constituent and parent units), previous names, related geological provinces (eg, basin, craton), and links to all publications that reference a stratigraphic unit. The ASUD is a central cog in Australia's national digital geological datasets. It is the repository of all unit descriptions in the national digital geological map datasets, and is linked to the national mineral deposits, geological provinces, and geological samples databases.