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Brief Introduction of National
Infrastructure of Mineral Rock and Fossil Resources for
Science and Technology
Mineral, Rock
and Fossil Infrastructure is an essential part of
Natural Infrastructure of Resources for Science and
Technology. The establishment of this Infrastructure is
not only a vital component for China¡¯s scientific and
technological innovation system, but also a significant
symbol of the social progress in science &
technology; it provides fundamental support for
enhancing national competitiveness and a crucial
guarantee for national security. The construction of the
Mineral, Rock and Fossil Infrastructure will effectively
promote the rational protection, scientific management
and efficient sharing of the natural science and
technology resources, to provide abundant high-quality
creative resources for scientific & technological
activities, and effectively ensure national securities
in ecology, health, natural resources and
society.
Mineral, rock and fossil specimen
resources include minerals, rocks, ores, and fossil
samples and relevant data and information which are
collected, sorted, identified, studied and gathered by
geoscientists for long time. The geological museums,
natural museums, universities, academies, institutions
and exploration/mining organizations all over China have
collected and preserved plenty of rock, mineral and
fossil samples, possessing rich specimen resources,
however, these resources have not been systematically
and scientifically managed without unified standard
formats for specimen description and storage, and there
is no a unified network platform for administering and
communicating, which results in the extremely low
efficiency in sharing the resources among different
institutions, organizations and individuals.
Consequently the collection, collation, conservation,
utilization and sharing of the specimen resources is a
high priority, fundamental and long-term strategic task
for China¡¯s geosciences.
"National Infrastructure
of Mineral Rock and Fossil Resources For Science and
Technology¡± is one of the major achievements of the
Natural Infrastructure of Resources for Science and
Technology. The infrastructure adopts an unified and
standardized digital format to describe and store all
information on the specimens collected by different
organizations and individuals, and establishes a certain
size, qualified specimen resources database and
information network platform, access to the network is
publicly available worldwide to realize the maximum
utilization and effective sharing of the
recourses
On the basis of the existing collection
of specimens, the infrastructure digitizes and
standardizes the information of specimens. A
comprehensive database of minerals, rocks, ores and
fossil specimen resources is constructed and put on
network platform that includes hand specimens and/or
thin sections as well as analytical data and other
relevant information of typical Chinese minerals and
ores, rocks from the Qinghai -Tibet Plateau and its
adjacent areas; rocks from high pressure and super-high
pressure metamorphosed belts of China; sedimentary rocks
from northern China craton £»China¡¯s
typical igneous rocks and their inclusions, and some
foreign rock and mineral specimens (thin sections) etc..
The fossil storage mainly contains invertebrate fossils,
ancient vertebrate fossils, ancient plant fossils,
ichnofossils, ancient human, ape and their remains
specimens, as well as associated
information
The infrastructure has
initially established a multimedia resources platform
for national mineralogy, petrology, economic geology and
paleontology teaching and scientific research as well as
public education. The infrastructure will gradually
release some sharing means, statutes and regulations,
including the classification of sharing the mineral,
rock and fossil specimens and relevant information, the
ways of sharing, the mechanism of apply-feedback, the
supervision mechanism, the member verification system
and the system of benefits evaluating.
¡°National
Infrastructure of Mineral Rock and Fossil Resources For
Science and Technology¡± will build its own professional
website. The web pages would be both in Chinese and
English for the convenience of the domestic and
international users to conduct online inquires and
retrieves. Under the WWW, the text inquiry and the
visualized inquiry are available, the latter could allow
users to zoom in or out, view, mark the area selected
and link the websites; meanwhile, it could publish
vector data, statistics, images and video information.
To larger capacity data files, the network also supports
the FTP transmission.
¡°National Infrastructure of
Mineral Rock and Fossil Resources for Science and
Technology¡± ultimately targets in building a modern,
international and open geological mineral, rock and
fossil data centre. The infrastructure will set up
samples storage, data and images storage, video storage
and corresponding documents storage, all of which are
connected to relevant national and international data
centers, samples storage and museums. Hence, the
Infrastructure would have the ability to collect and
preserve, to inquire and retrieve, to serve online as
well as the data publication functions and it can offer
the comparing and re-researching among the experts all
around the world.
Sincerely hopes that the vast
number of geoscientists and publics give their valuable
suggestions and comments to the construction of the
infrastructure, supporting and concern to the project
from the resources conservation organizations and
individuals are encouraged and warmly
welcomed.
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