The EDEIS Summary

The Expert Database on the Earth Impact Structures (EDEIS) is based on the catalogue of impact craters compiled in the Department of Mathematical Problems of Geophysics, the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics, Siberian Division, Russian Academy of Sciences (Petrenko, 1998; Petrenko and Lyapidevskaya, 1998). It contains the data for more than 830 structures of the Earth surface and the oceanic bottom. The basic set of parameters available for each structure includes its name, location (latitude, longitude), diameter and a depth of crater, an estimated age, the type of a structure, the presence of extraterrestrial material, bibliographical references to other catalogs or original publications. Almost all the entries are provided with satellite images showing the structure appearance from space.

The main difference of the EDEIS from other databases on impact structures, such as well-known Earth Impact Database maintained by the Planetary and Space Science Centre of the University of New Brunswick (Canada), is that the EDEIS contains the data not only on the validated craters, whose impact origin was confirmed by the full set of criteria, but also the data on probable or apparent structures. The cosmogenic genesis of these structures has not been confirmed yet, however, they have some typical impact features and therefore are promising for further study. The degree of confidence to the impact origin of a structure is characterized by its validity index V that varies from 0 to 4 depending on the number of criteria (morphological, structural, mineralogical, chemical) that are met for a particular structure in favor of its cosmogenic origin.

The validity index value roughly means the following:
4 – definite (all four types of criteria are confirmed)
3 – apparent (any three of four confirmed)
2 – promising (any two of four confirmed))
1 – possible (based mostly on crater morphology)
0 - a false entry

Distribution of the current database content over the validity index is as follows:
208 structures with V=4
186 structures with V=3
342 structures with V=2
35 structures with V=1
60 structures with V=0

Petrenko, V.E. (1998) Catalogs and data banks for the Earth impact structures, Trudy of the ICMMG SD RAN, Series: Mathematical Modeling in Geophysics, Vypusk 5, Novosibirsk, 161-180.
Petrenko, V.E. and Z.A.Lyapidevskay (1998) Data bank for the impact structures on the Earth, Trudy of the ICMMG SD RAN, Series: Mathematical Modeling in Geophysics, Vypusk 7, Novosibirsk, 161-185.