ONE MAP - MANY MAPPERS: IMPLICATIONS OF INNOVATIVE MAPPING, MODELING, AND NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES FOR GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION

For almost two hundred years, the traditional approach to geological mapping has involved a geologist and field assistant who mapped the walkable area surrounding their camp site carrying a hammer, compass clinometer, hand-lens, map-board, notebook, and the few additional tools they could fit with their lunch in their rucksacks. Specimens might have been occasionally shown to colleagues back in the lab and problems discussed with graduate students, but the production of a map and accompanying memoir was generally a solo affair and much hard-earned field wisdom and supporting data was lost with the retirement or death of eminent field geologists. Student mapping projects were destined for unpublished theses and map drawers. Rarely if ever did novice work get published. With the aid of today's digital technologies, including GPS, LiDAR, Gigapan, 3D scanners, GIS, and virtual globes such as Google Earth, numerous geoscientists can collaborate in social networks to produce maps on a scale that no individual or small group could possibly attempt. Smart phones allow mappers to carry the world's reference collections into the field. Furthermore, maps can now be subjected to truly scientific testing and can be modified in response to new observations after or even during the field season. Emerging web services such as Twitter, Google Knol, Opera Unite, and Google Wave could transform collaborative authoring and enable truly dynamic peer review. Digital globes have the potential to enable everyone to visualize the earth in deep time, deep space, and deep zoom, and to travel to any location or time period on a virtual field trip. Collada models and dynamic KML code permit detailed representation of the subsurface and construction of interactive paleo-DEMs. It is now possible for students to make significant new observations that contribute to digital super-maps as part of their early graduate or even undergraduate education. Errors made by novices are quickly corrected by contributions from dozens of more advanced peers. Thus, making maps as part of the geoscience field education curriculum has the potential to become an important form of kinesthetic and social learning.