A good post yesterday on Andrew's geology blog at About.com : "How many plates are there?" Some excellent points made, and made well.

All in favor of drawing the Somali Plate as its own entity on plate tectonic maps? Aye!

Labels: blogs, maps, plate tectonics

Four years ago, this website gave me some solace in looking at the breakdown between "red" and "blue" states. Now the author, Mark Newman, has performed some similar cartography on the 2008 presidential election results.

Labels: maps, politics, websites

Yesterday, I pulled up the Venetian blinds in my office window at NOVA, and this is what I saw:


Naturally, I had to take a photograph. It's puuurty.

While I had the camera out, I figured I'd shoot a few photos of the rest of my office, since it's full of all sorts of interesting clutter. Rather than explaining what all the doodads are in these photos, I figured it would be more fun to just post them and see if you can identify them all:















Have fun!

Labels: fossils, igneous, maps, metamorphism, minerals, nova, plants, sediment

In my new work with the Campus Landscaping & Beautification Committee, I've been asked to come up with a few locations for a pet project of mine. I want to create a series of "fake" geologic outcrops on campus so we can have a "fake" geology field trip without leaving campus. The idea here is to create outcrops (using real rocks) in contrived positions, so that students get experience with figuring out things like rock identification, relative dating, transgressive/regressive sequences, faulting, etc.

I got this idea from Matty (2006), which I stumbled across while xeroxing science education articles for an MSSE class this past spring. The basic point is to have clear, useful teaching examples that students can access outdoors (emphasizing those kinesthetic and naturalist intelligences), without having to deal with the costs (legal, insurance, gas, carbon footprint) of a "real" field trip.

As a first step towards coming up with recommendations about where our initial "fake" outcrops will be placed, I asked our campus architect for a map of the campus. I told him I would prefer one with topography on it. Sure enough, he gave me one with topography... and a 1-foot contour interval! I don't think I've ever seen a topographic map with that level of detail. Anyhow, it's a beautiful thing, and I wanted to share it with you. I've labelled the buildings with their two-letter call numbers. (I teach in the CT building, for instance, but my office is in CF.*) Check it out:

Comments on the map? Or on what you think ought to be included in a "Campus Geological Area"? You know how to comment...

* I hate these two-letter names. They are so utilitarian... Why must we call the CG Building "the CG Building," rather than Godwin Hall? That would be much more elegant and academic-sounding.

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Reference:
Matty, David J. (2006). "Campus landscaping by constructing mock geologic outcrops." Journal of Geoscience Education, v.54, n.4, p. 445-451.

Labels: maps, msse, nova

A colleague mentioned this website to me yesterday: Voting America.

Maintained by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond (Virginia), the website makes us of so-called "cinematic maps" which show how geopolitical data have changed over time for the lower 48 United States.

The different maps tell stories over time; I think it's a cool display of interesting information. However, a major omission is the exclusion of Alaska and Hawaii as contributing U.S. states. Check it out; let me know what you think.

Thanks Judith G. for alerting me to it!

Labels: maps, politics, virginia, websites

I leave this weekend to begin a two-month trip out west (Montana mainly, but also Grand Canyon and points in between). As I'm prepping for the trip, my cat Lola has been sabotaging my efforts to plan. Though I've reassured her that she'll get along great with my subletter, she is still obsessed with blocking my trip-planning progress.

Here she is lying on the roadmap of Colorado:



And here, covering the "explanation" for a geologic map of the states of the stable interior:



I love that my job allows me summer travel time, and I love that, living in DC, I can get a subletter to take over my rent and cat care during the time I'm away. But I will miss this little furball when I'm on the road. She's a great cat.

Labels: lola, maps, travel

Where's the geographical center of the United States of America? This article in today's Times visits it, or something like it, in South Dakota.

Is geoblogging a phenomenon yet? It must be, if Geotimes writes a story about it.

And: Elizabeth Kolbert profiles Buckminster Fuller in the New Yorker.

Labels: blogs, maps

Here's a photo of one of the cool things that my Honors students and I got to see on our recent trip up to Buffalo, New York (for the northeastern section meeting of GSA ):

That's an original, signed edition of the William Smith geologic map, brought to the meeting courtesy of the Buffalo Library. It is one of only two in the United States; the other is at the Library of Congress. The map found a home in Buffalo (of all places!) thanks to Chauncey Hamlin, the head of the Buffalo Museum of Science (then called the Buffalo Society of Natural Science) from 1920 to 1948. During his tenure, he assembled a collection of first editions of many seminal scientific works. First editions of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and Herbert Hoover's* translation of Agricola's De Re Metallica were also on display at the conference.

* Yes, that Herbert Hoover, at least according to Wikipedia.

Labels: geology, history, maps, meetings, nova

What's the difference between these pictures?

... Find out at the NASA Earth Observatory feature page that examines "Cities at night: the view from space."

Labels: environmental, maps, satellite imagery

Here's a cool website that shows different maps of the world based on different data.

For instance, countries scaled to their population sizes:

Or here's the number of preventable deaths per country:

Build your own, or let me know if you find any other interesting ones...

Thanks to Anastassia for tipping me off on this one!

Labels: maps, websites

I've got a nice tough A.W.o.G.E. for you today. Hint: it's somewhere in the Virginia Piedmont. The presence of an airplane over the photographed site may help confirm the location, once you think you've found it.

In the comments section below, be the first to name the location and why the treeless area suffers so much sulfuric acid, and you will win a "GEOLOGY ROCKS" bumper sticker.

Labels: contest, google, maps, nova, piedmont

Take the next five minutes of your life, and watch this video about a cool new imaging experiment done by Kevin Gurney's research group at Purdue. They've taken pre-existing data about CO2 emissions and plotted it in a dynamic map. The most striking feature is the pulsating nature of the United States' CO2 emissions: we put out a lot during the day, and not so much at night. The maps really show this -- demonstrating yet again the power of images (over description) to convey information.

It's long been my contention that one of the biggest problems with the global warming issue is that CO2 is invisible. I'll bet that if people actually saw giant clouds the color of liquid Barney wafting off the coast every day, then they would be more inclined to think of carbon dioxide as something tangible.

Labels: art, climate change, CO2, global warming, maps

A friend alerted me to this cool blog that showcases weird maps. You gotta check it out. As a geological incentive to visit, here's one of the Mississippi River's shifting meanders through time:

If you don't have time to sift through all of them, a "best of" list of 21 maps is compiled here.

Labels: blogs, maps

A cool feature from Google Maps allows users to create individualized maps with content centered on specific locations. They call them "My Maps." This maps are then viewable in any HTML browser. Check out the "Earth As Art" demonstration map, or this "Oral Histories of Route 66" map for examples of the kind of stuff that you can do with "My Maps." You can also watch the video about how to create them.

It occurs to me that My Maps might be a good way to share geologic knowledge about outcrop locations. One thing that I found frustrating and limiting in my first few years of teaching was that there was no good single source to go to find out about relevant outcrops. It took time and experience to find out where the cool rocks were. Is it a good idea to put this information online in a publicly-accessible format so beginning instructors and interested students/amateurs can visit interesting outcrops? (I sure would have appreciated it four years ago!) Or does that run the risk of letting rockhounds and less-than-ethical geovandals onto previously-secret locations? Is there a benefit to the ancient barriers in outcrop-information flow? Is it better to pass this information on from wise elder to trusted neophyte?

Labels: google, maps, teaching, tech, websites

Starting today, DC police are monitoring live images from surveillance cameras in many parts of the city. The District has 73 cameras, with live feeds from 54. The Washington Post published this map showing where they are (supposedly the locations were chosen in historically high crime areas). They also have an article about the new system. My 'hood of Adams-Morgan gets two, it looks like...

Anyhow, I always love maps, so I thought I'd share this one.

Labels: dc, maps

Labels: google, maps