GIS in Geology

Objective:

• How and where to find and acquire geological GIS data

• How to put that GIS into a form that manipulated and displayed

• How to add your new observations and comments to an existing dataset

• How to make professional looking maps
   

Disclaimer:

• I'm no expert, I will share what I've learned while doing what I needed to do

• I know no other program that can present map data as cleanly and professionally as ESRI products, particularly ArcMapper

• GIS has a wealth of analysis amazing analysis capabilities... most of which will rarely or ever be used by a geologist

• This course is will not match the coverage and depth of courses offered by Geography... HOWEVER:

  • GIS is an immense subject and ArcGIS a powerful software suite of which geologist use a small part... It's important to learn that small part

  • Going to Geography to learn GIS makes as much sense as going to Math to learn MS Excel™ or English to learn MS Word™

• ESRI products have an amazingly steep learning curve (maybe for a reason).  We'll only use them when a simpler tool is not available.  We will, however, use ArcMAP for displaying, printing , and some manipulation of data because it does a great job.

• GIS is in flux; software, data availability and format, and even data type is changing with dizzying rapidity... learn how to teach yourself and stay current

Assignments

Sources of Software

• Global Mapper

• Getting your own copy of ArcGIS

Sources of Data

• ESRI Data on Your Local Machine

• Federal GIS Data Sources

• State GIS Data Sources

A brief first look at DEM's

First look at ArcMap 8.3 (~3MB pdf)

A second look at DLG's (~1.8MB pdf)

A second look at DEM's (~3MB pdf)

Content creation, cropping, and GPS (~0.5MB pdf)

Mapping GPS data (~0.5MB pdf)

Global topography datasets and working with geologic maps (~3.6MB pdf)

Making a scene (~0.5MB pdf)

How to "uncollar" a scanned Kentucky 7.5' Geologic Quadrangle (~0.5MB pdf)

Using Ohio LiDAR data from OGRIP (~2.9MB pdf)