MedVolc-Ph: A database of mineralogical phases from volcanic deposits in the central Mediterranean area as a tool for tephrostratigraphy

Abstract

Abstract Databases facilitate the rapid access of crucial information, consequently these tools are vital to the various disciplines within the Earth sciences that study volcanic rocks. In the central Mediterranean, archives of data describing the bulk and glass compositions of volcanic rocks exist, but those resources are not structured as searchable databases or, if they are, they are too general to be useful for specific problems (e.g. correlation of tephra layers in the Tertiary-Quaternary stratigraphy). Here we present a new, open access database that contains information describing (mainly) mineral phases and (minor) glass compositions of distal and proximal deposits from the Miocene to the present day. The MedVolc-PH database can be searched using single or multiple queries, facilitating the correlation or study of deposit(s) with the requested characteristics. This manuscript describes the database scheme and highlights how the database can be queried through user-friendly examples of central Mediterranean tephra correlations.