PANGAEA is an information system for processing, long-term storage, and publication of georeferenced data related to earth science fields. Essential services supplied by PANGAEA are project data management and the distribution of visualization and analysis software. Organization of data management includes quality control and publication of data and the dissemination of metadata according to international standards. Data managers are responsible for acquisition and maintenance of data. The data model used reflect the information processing steps in the earth science fields and can handle any related analytical data. The basic technical structure corresponds to a three tiered client/server architecture with a number of comprehensive clients and middleware components controlling the information flow and quality. On the server side a relational database management system (RDBMS) is used for information storage. The web-based clients include a simple search engine (PangaVista) and a data mining tool (ART). The client used for maintenance of information contents is optimized for data management purposes. Analysis and visualization of metainformation and analytical data is supported by a number of software tools, which can either be used as 'plug-ins' of the PANGAEA clients or as standalone applications, distributed as freeware from the PANGAEA website. Established and well-documented software tools are the mini-GIS PanMap, the plotting tool PanPlot, and Ocean Data View (ODV) for the exploration of oceanographic data. PANGAEA operates on a long-term basis. The available resources are sufficient not only for the acquisition of new data and the maintenance of the system but also for further technical and organizational developments. r

Specific parameters detennined from marine sediments can be used as proxy data to calculate fonner ocean properties. To use this scientific resource effectively an infonnation system is needed which guarantees consistent longtime storage of the proxy data and provides easy access for the scientific community. An infonnation system to archive proxy data of paleoclimatic relevance, together with the related meta-infonnation, raw data and evaluated paleoclimatic data, is presented here. The system provides standardized import and export routines, easy access with unifonn retrieval functions, and tools for the visualization of data. The network is designed as a client/server system providing access through the Internet.

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Abstract. PANGAEA -Publishing Network for Geoscientific and Environmental Data (http://www.pangaea.de) is an information system aimed at archiving, publishing, and distributing data related to climate variability, the marine environment, and the solid earth.The system is a public "data library" distributing any kind of data to the scientific community through the Internet. Data are stored in a relational database in a consistent format with related meta-information following international standards.Data are georeferenced in space and/ or time, individually configured subsets may be extracted. Any type of information, data and documents may be served (profiles, maps, photos, graphics, text and numbers). Operation by Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) is assured in the long-term. Both institutions provide the technical infrastructure, system management and support for data management of projects as well as for individual scientists. Most important collections from Antarctic research archived in PANGAEA so far are the data of the Cape Roberts Project, geological maps and age determinations of rock outcrops, a complete set of JGOFS,WOCE, DSDP and ODP data including those from the Southern Ocean, any marine sediment cores, documentation and analytical data from German expeditions and an increasing inventory of data published by the running EPICA project.

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