GEODESC web applications for collaborative description of geological materials – a legacy of the JOIDES Resolution era

Expedition scientists on the JOIDES Resolution ( JR ) during the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) carried out visual descriptions of hundreds of kilometers of cores to characterize the sequences drilled for subsequent subsampling and analysis. The methods and tools for this collaborative process, conducted under demanding workflow conditions, evolved over the decades along with evolving technologies, user expectations, and collective experience gained. The review presented here recognizes five phases of database and user application development from 1985 to 2024, culminating in the GEODESC (GEOlogical DESCription) toolset built in 2019–2023 and deployed during the last 2 years of JR operations. GEODESC was designed around spreadsheet-based data capture, continuing the approach users had independently applied and explicitly requested. Likewise, the final products are well-structured spreadsheets suitable for analysis and visualization. A relational database supports collaborative work, data security, and quality control. State-of-the-art web applications provide user-friendly interfaces that can be run on all major web browsers without the need to install software, making collaborations among globally distributed team members easy. GEODESC supports geological core description of all types of Earth materials at microscopic, macroscopic, and summary scales and supports micropaleontological data capture as well. GEODESC catalogs provide ready-to-use templates and template components based on programmatic experience for efficient project template creation and an application to customize templates to meet project needs. An observable definition syntax promotes quality and consistency among hundreds of observables. GEODESC web applications require an administrator to initiate projects and create user accounts with appropriate credentials and roles. The JOIDES Resolution Science Operator (JRSO) originally hosted the service, and it is now maintained by the Gulf Coast Repository (GCR) and used at the GCR and beyond. If not used directly at additional organizations, the modular, feature-rich, and highly configurable GEODESC tool set and its history may serve as a reference for current and future organizations developing software for geological descriptions.