Abstract
Abstract. We present a database of cosmogenic radionuclide and luminescence measurements in fluvial sediment. With support from the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) we have built infrastructure for hosting and maintaining the data at the University of Wollongong and making this available to the research community via an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)-compliant web service. The cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) part of the database consists of 10Be and 26Al measurements in modern fluvial sediment samples from across the globe, along with ancillary geospatial vector and raster layers, including sample site, basin outline, digital elevation model, gradient raster, flow-direction and flow-accumulation rasters, atmospheric pressure raster, and CRN production scaling and topographic shielding factor rasters. Sample metadata are comprehensive and include all necessary information for the recalculation of denudation rates using CAIRN, an open-source program for calculating basin-wide denudation rates from 10Be and 26Al data. Further all data have been recalculated and harmonised using the same program. The luminescence part of the database consists of thermoluminescence (TL) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurements in fluvial sediment samples from stratigraphic sections and sediment cores from across the Australian continent and includes ancillary vector and raster geospatial data. The database can be interrogated and downloaded via a custom-built web map service. More advanced interrogation and exporting to various data formats, including the ESRI Shapefile and Google Earth's KML, is also possible via the Web Feature Service (WFS) capability running on the OCTOPUS server. Use of open standards also ensures that data layers are visible to other OGC-compliant data-sharing services. OCTOPUS and its associated data curation framework provide the opportunity for researchers to reuse previously published but otherwise unusable CRN and luminescence data. This delivers the potential to harness old but valuable data that would otherwise be lost to the research community. OCTOPUS can be accessed at https://earth.uow.edu.au (last access: 28 November 2018). The individual data collections can also be accessed via the following DOIs: https://doi.org/10.4225/48/5a8367feac9b2 (CRN International), https://doi.org/10.4225/48/5a836cdfac9b5 (CRN Australia), and https://doi.org/10.4225/48/5a836db1ac9b6 (OSL & TL Australia).
Highlights
Cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) exposure dating and luminescence dating are suites of geochronological techniques that have become important for the studying of Earth surface processes (e.g. Rhodes, 2011; Granger et al, 2013)
Use of open standards ensures that data layers are visible to other Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)-compliant data-sharing services
It is possible to subset the data by geographic location: http://earth.uow.edu.au:80/geoserver/ wfs?request=GetFeature&typename =be10-denude:crn_int_basins& outputformat=SHAPE-ZIP& BBOX=-0,20,40,60,EPSG:4326 where 0,20,40,60 are the coordinates of the bounding box used to clip the data and EPSG:4326 indicates that the coordinates are WGS84 latitude and longitude in degrees
Summary
Cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) exposure dating and luminescence dating are suites of geochronological techniques that have become important for the studying of Earth surface processes (e.g. Rhodes, 2011; Granger et al, 2013). The two suites of techniques have been extensively used among others to quantify basin-wide denudation rates (von Blanckenburg, 2005; Granger and Schaller, 2014), to reconstruct the extent of Quaternary glaciations (Spencer and Owen, 2004; Balco, 2011; Ivy-Ochs and Briner, 2014), to study how rivers have adapted to past climate change via incision and aggradation (Schaller et al, 2004; Lewis et al, 2009; Wallinga et al, 2010), and to study the timing of dune construction (Fitzsimmons et al, 2007; Fujioka et al, 2009; Bristow et al, 2010). Dunai and Stuart, 2009; Frankel et al, 2010), the published work will often not include appropriate levels of metadata to make the raw data reusable with ease The latter is especially important in the case of cosmogenic nuclides as procedures used to interpret CRN data are regularly revised and updated, requiring denudation rates and/or exposure ages to be recalculated using updated measurement standards and calculation protocols. OCTOPUS can be accessed at https://earth.uow.edu.au (last access: 28 November 2018)
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