THE EVOLUTION OF GRAPHICS FROM FIELD NOTES TO FINAL DRAFT

Graphics recorded along with textual information in field notes comprise an important resource for rendition and interpretation in later periods of an investigation. Graphics - commonly freehand sketches and annotations - provide a form of visual memory of form, place, geometry, and scale that is difficult to explain with pure text. Certainly photographic records contain more detail, but it is the hand-recorded illustration that allows a geologist to emphasize the significant features of an exposure. Furthermore, a field sketch is prepared and at least partially interpreted in real time by the observer, whereas photographic records are often interpreted at a much later time. Though “rough”, drawn illustrations embedded within field notes can be prepared even by marginally artistic geologists to reasonably show proper relative proportions, to locate an observation within a larger context, to approximate true geometry, and to reflect absolute scale. A field illustration provides a pivot balancing the fine structure of an outcrop visible only in prepared and magnified sections with the gross structure of the rock mass or regional map. It is this series of visualizations, partitioned both in space and time and supported with descriptive text and quantitative measurements, that leads to a final product in the form of a map, paper, or book. A series of field sketches primarily collected from ductile shear zones in the Southern Appalachian Mountains demonstrates this integration of notes and figures with petrographic structural analysis and figures in final draft form. Some of the rocks described in these examples have impossible, virtually fractal structures that cannot be fully revealed in a field sketch, but it is still possible to compose a skeletal representation of the kinematically important structures in an outcrop.