Community infrastructure and repository for marine magnetic identifications

Abstract

Magnetic anomaly identifications underpin plate tectonic reconstructions and form the primary data set from which the age of the oceanic lithosphere and seafloor spreading regimes in the ocean basins can be determined. Although these identifications are an invaluable resource, their usefulness to the wider scientific community has been limited due to the lack of a central community infrastructure to organize, host, and update these interpretations. We have developed an open-source, community-driven online infrastructure as a repository for quality-checked magnetic anomaly identifications from all ocean basins. We provide a global sample data set that comprises 96,733 individually picked magnetic anomaly identifications organized by ocean basin and publication reference, and provide accompanying Hellingerformat files, where available. Our infrastructure is designed to facilitate research in plate tectonic reconstructions or research that relies on an assessment of plate reconstructions, for both experts and nonexperts alike. To further enhance the existing repository and strengthen its value, we encourage others in the community to contribute to this effort.

Ensemble Kalman filter for the reconstruction of the Earth's mantle circulation

“…Hellinger (1981) developed a method to compute relative motion of plates and associated uncertainties inferred from magnetic anomaly identifications. Recently, Seton et al (2014) built an open-source community database. This database gathers both the coordinates of the seafloor magnetic anomaly lineations, and their associated plate relative motion and uncertainties, computed using the Hellinger method (Hellinger, 1981).…”

“…On a global scale, the main source of information for the last 100 Myr is the database of the localization and identification of magnetic anomalies on the seafloor, translated into maps of seafloor ages (Müller et al, 2008;Seton et al, 2014). This information is complemented with regional geological studies giving constraints on the timing and geometry of tectonic events as well as a synthesis of paleontological, structural geology, stratigraphical, magnetic anomalies, gravity data and seismic studies.…”

The Indian Promontory: A Bridge between Plate Tectonics and Life Evolution Models

“…Gaina et al [23] provided a solution for the EarthByte Group model (https://www.earthbyte.org/) that has been widely used since then and up to now ( Fig.3; e.g. [6] up to [24][25][26]). …”

Ensemble Kalman filter for the reconstruction of the Earth's mantle circulation

“…At a global scale, the main source of 25 information for the last 100 Myr is the database of the localization and identification of magnetic anomalies on the seafloor, translated into maps of seafloor ages (Müller et al, 2008;Seton et al, 2014). This information is complemented with regional geological studies giving constraints on the timing and geometry of tectonic events as well as a synthesis of paleontological, structural geology, stratigraphical, magnetic anomalies, gravity data and seismic studies.…”

“…Hellinger (1981) developed a method to compute relative motion of plates and associated uncertainties inferred from magnetic anomaly identifications. Re-20 cently, Seton et al (2014) built an open source community database. It gathers seafloor magnetic anomaly identifications, and estimation with Hellinger (1981) method of plates relative motion and associated uncertainties.…”