With the amount of data being produced in the fields of Petrology and Geochemistry, we find that any statement or summary made more than two years ago is already greatly in need of revision. Nor can students being expected to read and remember the thousands of papers and publications produced annually. Approximately 4000 scientific papers likely to have some relevence to geochemistry were published in the last 12 months. The compilation of abstracts for the 2005 Fall AGU meeting included about 10,000 abstracts, mainly poster sessions. There has been no summary of the composition of the Hawaiian Islands written in the last 30 years, and no overview of the Oceanic crust, which constitutes 60% of the Earth's surface has ever been written. Even "Geokem" has far less on Oceanic sediments that we would like though we can clain a fairly complete coverage of Oceanic basalts. Due to the well known phenomena of mental inertia, outdated theory which has become fashionable or politically correct often cannot be questioned twenty years or more after it has become plain that it is not adequate so progress in knowledge is much slower than it should be.
GEOKEM aims at keeping at hand and referable to within seconds, a brief description of the composition of all volcanic and igneous centres world-wide (and some associated sediments) for which there is reasonable data, together with a regional variation diagram as well as a multi-element fingerprint, REE, metals, the alkaline Earth trace elements (Zr, Nb, Sr, Rb, Y, Ba) and other relevant diagrams for single centres. Short descriptions together with fractionation diagrams, comparisons between the different types of basalt known as ORB (Oceanic Ridge Basalt), NMORB, EMORB, OIB, IAB, CAB, (see Glossary for terminology) and other fundamental magma types, graphic comparisons between centres of similar and dissimilar type, and the primary basaltic parental magma trends and fractionation trends etc are all shown. It is continuously updated as new data comes to hand. There are still omissions, diagrams not yet done etc due to lack of finance and that ever scarce commodity, time. All data used has been identified by an abbreviated reference, necessarily so, as it must fit in the width of a computer plot. If any data used is missing a reference somewhere in the general text, we welcome communications pointing this out. Completed references to all published data are also to be found in the main databases PETDB and GEOROC and sometimes we show copies of these.
GEOKEM shows about 1200 diagrams and more than 240 illustrating pix but these are very hard to come by for places we have not visited personally.
