CHRONOS’s Paleontological-Stratigraphic Interval Construction and Analysis Tool (PSICAT)

Joshua A. Reed¹, Cinzia Cervato¹, Christopher R. Fielding², and Douglas Fils^1
1 Iowa State University - CHRONOS, Ames, IA
² University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE

The Paleontological-Stratigraphic Interval Construction and Analysis Tool (PSICAT) is a Java-based graphical editing tool for creating and viewing stratigraphic column diagrams from drill cores and outcrops. It is customized to the task of working with stratigraphic columns and captures data digitally as you draw and edit the diagram. The data and diagrams are captured in open formats, and integration with the CHRONOS system (www.chronos.org) will allow the user to easily upload their data and diagrams into CHRONOS. Because the data and diagrams are stored in CHRONOS, they will be accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time. PSICAT is designed with a modular, plug-in-based architecture that will allow it to support a wide variety of functionality, tasks, and geoscientific communities.

PSICAT is currently being developed for use by the ANDRILL project (http://www.andrill.org) on their upcoming drilling expeditions in Antarctica, but a general community version will be also available. PSICAT will allow unprecedented communication between Antarctica-based scientists and shore-based scientists, potentially allowing shore-based scientists to interact in almost real time with on-ice operations and data collection. Later, a more generic version is going to have wide applications for fieldwork and core logging in industry and academia.