Terms used across Macrostrat's documentation and software.
Age model: The account of how a column's units are placed in geologic time: ages at the surfaces between units, anchored at tie points and interpolated between them. See Age model.
Best age: The age range assigned to a map legend entry by combining the map's stated intervals with the ages of linked column units.
Carto: Macrostrat's main multiscale geologic map, composed from all integrated maps and served as map tiles at several levels of detail. See Map compilations.
Column: A record of the succession of rock units at a place, compiled at regional or local scale. Also used generally for both column types (column and section). See Stratigraphic columns.
Column group: A set of related columns, for example those of one basin.
Compilation: A map assembled from other maps (its members), with priorities deciding which member is shown where. See Map compilations.
Concept: The stratigraphic unit a name refers to, as defined in an authoritative lexicon. Several names may share a concept. See Geologic lexicon.
Environment: A depositional environment (for example, fluvial or carbonate marine) assigned to units.
Footprint: The area a record covers: a column's footprint is the region it represents; a map's footprint is where it is defined.
Interval: A named span of geologic time (an eon, period, stage, zone and so on) with numeric top and bottom ages. Intervals are grouped into timescales.
Legend entry: All the polygons of a map that share one description. Legend entries are the unit of harmonization. See Geologic maps.
Lexicon: Macrostrat's controlled vocabularies: stratigraphic names and concepts, lithologies, lithology attributes, environments, economic attributes and intervals. See Geologic lexicon.
Lithology: A rock type (for example, basalt), placed in a hierarchy of group, type and class (mafic, volcanic, igneous).
Lithology attribute: A qualifier of a lithology, such as a sedimentary structure, bedform, grain characteristic or color.
Mosaic: A compilation whose members divide its area between them without overlapping.
Package: An unconformity-bounded group of units within a column, inside which time is represented continuously. Stored as a section in the database.
Priority: The authored rank that decides which map is shown where maps overlap in a compilation.
Project: A dataset of columns developed as a unit within Macrostrat, such as the core North American compilation or a set of ocean-drilling cores.
Scale (tiny, small, medium, large): The four scale buckets Macrostrat sorts maps into, from global compilations (tiny) to detailed local mapping (large).
Section: (1) A column type recording one physical succession, such as a measured section or core, positioned by height. (2) An unconformity-bounded package of units within a column.
Served layer: A compilation that is published as map tiles.
Source: Any map in Macrostrat, individual or compiled, identified by a source_id and a
slug.
Staging: The workspace where a newly ingested map is cleaned and harmonized before it joins Macrostrat's core map tables. See Map ingestion.
Stratigraphic name: A name for a body of rock (supergroup, group, subgroup, formation, member or bed) as used in a particular place, nested within its parent names.
Superseded: Said of a map that has been replaced by a newer map or compilation.
Tie point: A surface in a column whose age is constrained directly (absolute, relative, spike or imposed), as opposed to interpolated by the age model.
Timescale: A set of intervals that together divide geologic time, such as the international chronostratigraphic timescale.
Unit: A body of rock or sediment within a column, bounded in space and time and described by its name, lithologies, environments, thickness and age.
