Databank puts info at world's fingertips

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will release about 5 million gigabytes of data related to Earth sciences, biology and ecology from around globe, allowing scientists and officials worldwide to study and tackle issues in climate change, food security, disaster relief and environmental protection.

The data can be accessed on the CASEarth Databank at data.casearth.cn, which was launched on Tuesday. Around 1.8 million gigabytes of content are remote-sensing data, 2.6 million gigabytes is on biology and ecology, and 0.4 million gigabytes is on the atmosphere and ocean, said Guo Huadong, chief scientist of CASEarth, the academy's Big Earth Data Science Engineering Project.

The databank also includes more than 3.6 million items on China's biosphere, 420,000 items on microbes and 490,000 items on paleontology, Guo said. It will update 3 million gigabytes of data every year, making sure users have the latest and most comprehensive data.