OCTOPUS: An Open Cosmogenic Isotope and Luminescence Database.

We present a new open and global 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 Map Service. The cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN) part of the database consists of 10Be and 26Al measurements in fluvial sediment samples 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 is comprehensive and includes 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 repository and visualisation system enable easy search and discovery of available data. Use of open standards also ensures that data layers are visible to other OGC compliant data sharing services. Thus, OCTOPUS will turn data that was previously invisible to those not within the CRN and luminescence research communities into a findable resource. This aspect is of importance to industry or local government who are yet to discover the value of geochronological data in, amongst others, placing human impacts on the environment into context. The availability of the repository and its associated data curation framework will provide the opportunity for researchers to store, curate, recalculate and re-use 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. The streamlined repository and transparent data re-analysis framework will also reduce research time and avoid duplication of effort, which will be highly attractive to other researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]