The main goals of the Working Group are:
* The development of a common nomenclature and classification of tracers of life and habitability to be used by all subdisciplines (including ground-based or space experiments, theoretical work, modelling efforts, and observations) and going from Earth and the Solar System to exoplanets within the context of finding carbon-based life and habitable environments.
* The identification of the current gaps in tracer knowledge and a recommendation for further research.
* The development of a standardized, systematic, openly accessible, online tracers-portal framework that links to all relevant existing databases, projects, and research groups, thereby relying on common vocabularies and high-quality metadata. Portal users must be able to easily participate and find and connect to researchers from all involved disciplines, e.g. compare the exoplanet.eu website for basic star-exoplanet parameters.
Header Image: The three domains that we will compare for quality and nomenclature of possible tracers of life and habitability: Earth, Solar System bodies, and exoplanets. Examples of tracers commonly cited but not unambiguous because of possible abiotic origin shown here are a stromatolite showing the fossil record of Earth, organic matter as was already found on Mars, and an example atmospheric spectrum of an Earth-like exoplanet. Fossil image credit: Didier Descouens, Wikipedia