GeoCORK: Integrating Existing Databases

Session: Transforming Earth and Planetary Science Through Data and Data Management: In Honor of MSA Distinguished Public Service Medal Awardee, Kerstin Lehnert

Presenting Author:

Authors:

Abstract:

Geochronological data are used across many different fields of geology. As analyses become cheaper and easier, and online databases grow, researchers have access to an abundance of data for large-scale studies. GeoCORK is an existing open-source desktop application that allows researchers to compile U-Pb geochronology from any source through an assisted data import wizard.  GeoCORK fills a crucial gap in researcher data management between the steps of data reduction and data visualization, akin to a reference manager. Prior to GeoCORK, there was no existing solution that assisted the researcher in complete metadata management and the ability to sort, filter, and export to existing formats (detritalPy, IsoPlotR, DzStats).  U-Pb datasets are often stored in online databases using their own formatting standards, and as community reporting standards continue to evolve with funding shifts, some online repositories become stagnant. Additionally, as data-driven research becomes desirable, there is an increasing need for interconnectivity between community standards that allow easier importing and exporting between formats. GeoCORK solves this by building pre-defined import and export scripts directly into the application with future scripts being added in subsequent releases. Scripts can be produced to automatically gather and convert the most recent data available at each run iteration from an online repository into a usable format to be used with GeoCORK. We present the results of the first of these scripts from the online repository geochron.org, which has not seen any steady data uploads in years. Converting geochron.org’s data into GeoCORK allows the once stagnant U-Pb data to be easily combined with recent data compilations such as Puetz et al. 2024.