The Shallow-Marine Architecture Knowledge Store: A database for the characterization of shallow-marine and paralic depositional systems

摘要

The Shallow-Marine Architecture Knowledge Store (SMAKS) is a relational database devised for the storage of hard and soft data on the sedimentary architecture of ancient shallow-marine and paralic siliciclastic successions, and on the geomorphological organization of corresponding modern environments. The database allows incorporation of data from the published literature, which are uploaded to a common standard to ensure consistency in data definition. The database incorporates data on geological entities of varied nature and scale (i.e., surfaces, depositional tracts, architectural elements, sequence stratigraphic units, facies units, geomorphic elements), including attributes that characterize their type, geometry, spatial relations, hierarchical relations, and temporal significance. Furthermore, geological entities are assigned to depositional systems, or to parts thereof, that can be classified on multiple parameters (e.g., shelf width, delta catchment area) tied to metadata (e.g., data types, data sources).