THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE GEOLOGY-GIS GEODATABASE DATA MODEL

Bedrock and surficial geologic maps and supporting information provide the foundation for studies of ecosystems, earth history, groundwater, geomorphology, soils, and environmental hazards such as fire history, landslide, and rockfall potential. Geologic maps describe the underlying physical conditions of many natural systems and are an integral component of the physical science inventories stipulated by the National Park Service (NPS) in its Natural Resources Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Guideline. The NPS has identified GIS and digital cartographic products as fundamental resource management tools. There are few geologists employed at most parks, thus these tools are particularly important to the National Park Service to aid resource managers in effectively using geologic data for park management decisions.

The NPS Geologic Resources Division (GRD) is currently developing a Geologic Resources Evaluation (GRE) that includes: 1) a geologic bibliography, 2) the creation of summary reports of each park’s geology and geologic issues, 3) evaluation of existing geologic maps, and 4) the development of a geology-GIS Data Model for digital geologic-GIS data. Migration from a coverage/theme-based Geology-GIS Data Model to a Geodatabase Geology-GIS Data Model is currently underway. Initial schema for datasets, feature classes, tables and domains, and relationship classes is in draft format. The design of Unified Modeling Language (UML) blueprint plans using Microsoft Visio will soon follow. The next step will be generating XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) schema from the UML plans, then implementing the XMI schema to define Geodatabase schema using Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools. After implementation and debugging, the migration of existing Geology-GIS data will commence.