Strong MgII Absorption Systems in QSOS from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is obtaining multicolor images over more than 10,000 square degrees of high Galactic latitude sky and providing medium resolution spectra for approximately 106 galaxies and 100,000 quasars. The early data release (EDR) of June 2001 (Schneider et al. 2002) contains spectra of ≈ 3800 QSOs with redshifts ranging from z = 0.15 to z = 5.03. The spectra cover the wavelength interval 3800 A 1.0 A detected at 5σ and with redshifts 0.37 > z > 2.27. This sample is an order of magnitude larger than previous similarly selected samples. In this contribution, we present preliminary results on the statistical properties of the sample.