An online registry for unique sample identification in the solid Earth Sciences (SESAR) We request support for an initial one-year project through a Small Grant for Exploratory Research to respond as quickly as possible to the urgent need for unique sample identifiers in the development of a Geoscience Cyberinfrastructure. We will build a web-based digital registry for solid earth samples that will provide for the first time a way to uniquely name and identify samples on a global scale. Establishing such system will have a wide-ranging impact on sample and data management, especially with respect to sample sharing and data integration. Through the ability to track a sample through its history, the system will facilitate our ability to build on previously collected data on samples as new techniques are developed, thus solving a long standing major problem in the geosciences in which samples lose their "identity" as their names get changed as aliquots are passed from one investigator to another. The unique identifiers will also dramatically advance interoperability among information systems for sample-based data, opening an extensive range of new opportunities for discovery and for interdisciplinary approaches in research. Building a system that will provide the means for uniquely naming solid earth samples will have a dramatic impact on the future of the Geosciences. Several major existing and emerging data and information management projects that handle sample-based data, such as CHRONOS, EarthChem, SedDB, PaleoStrat - to name a few - are seriously hampered in their potential to link disparate data for samples and develop interoperability among the systems by the inability to uniquely identify samples, and thus this system is an important response to a rapidly developing need. The Solid Earth SAmple Registry (SESAR) will allow wide ranges of sample-based data types to be linked and integrated, thus leading to new interdisciplinary approaches in research.
