The Paleoenvironmental Standard Terms (PaST) thesaurus: Standardizing heterogeneous variables in paleoscience

This heterogeneity is one of the biggest barriers to finding paleoclimatic records, to building large-scale data products, and to the use of paleoscience data beyond the community of specialists. Here, we document the Paleoenvironmental Standard Terms (PaST) thesaurus, the first authoritative vocabulary of standardized variable names for paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental data developed in a formal knowledge organization structure.

This structure is designed to improve data set discovery, support automated processing of data, and provide connectivity to other vocabularies. PaST is now used operationally at the World Data Service for Paleoclimatology (WDS-Paleo), one of the largest repositories of paleoscience information. Terms from the PaST thesaurus standardize a broad array of paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic measured and inferred variables, providing enough detail for accurate and precise data discovery and thereby promoting data reuse.