50 Geolore: Local Geology Field Trips Merge Geology and History to Motivate Students, Teachers, and Community Members to Explore Natural Areas

Tuesday, 20 March 2018
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Emerald Ballroom II

NYSGA GUIDEBOOK DATABASE AVAILABLE AS AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET

Paper number: 50-10
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 10:40 AM – 11:00 AM

Authors

Abstract

The New York State Geological Association (NYSGA) has been holding Field Conferences for 89 years. Each has somewhere between six and 21 field trips, visiting stops throughout NY as well as many in NJ, PA and VT. Every conference has a Guidebook containing outcrop descriptions as well as papers analyzing the geology and putting it into context. The field trips are designed for a wide range of participants, from beginners to specialists, and some are directed at Earth Science teachers. Many of the stops and views could be easily adapted to Geolore field trips.

The NYSGA now permits downloads of its collection of scanned conference Guidebooks, through 2012, for free. One obstacle, particularly for new users, is trying to determine which Guidebook will have field trips for a particular area of interest. To address this we have converted the stops and views from the Guidebook Road Logs into kml format and put these on an interactive map on the web. As of this writing, we have converted the Guidebooks from 1956 through 1999 and work continues on more recent ones.

In the process we developed a database, which currently contains 6,500 stops and views. This can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet and associated Word document that will let users search the database and output selected stops and views as a csv, xlsx or kml file. It permits users to limit searches to within some distance from a given spot, and thus seems useful to folks making Geolore field trips.

Each stop contains its year and field trip, permitting the user to download just the relevant chapter from the web. These chapters, many containing detailed maps, can then be integrated into a final Geolore field trip guide. The stops and views can be viewed on Google Earth or exported to tablets or phones for apps such as Avenza Maps, Pocket Earth, etc.

This presentation will review the history of the project and show how to use the Excel spreadsheet and Word document to assist in constructing a local field trip.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 50, No. 2

doi: 10.1130/abs/2018NE-310372

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