TELLING THE STORY OF THE CANADIAN ROCKIES VIA GOOGLE EARTH AND GIGAPAN

The Canadian Rockies are a Mesozoic to Cenozoic Sevier-style fold and thrust belt in eastern British Columbia and western Alberta, Canada. The rocks exposed are Neoproterozoic to Cretaceous in age, and have been revealed through exceptional glacial sculpting during the Pleistocene. We documented more than fifty critical outcrops and landscapes using GigaPan gigapixel panorama technology, and embedded these ultra-large, explorable images in the context of Google Earth. The result is a virtual field trip available to students anywhere in the world, regardless of whether they have funds to travel to Banff or whether they have the physical ability to hike on rough, rocky trails to a spot like the Walcott Quarry in the Burgess Shale. Between the two digital media, this is the next best thing to being on the Icefields Parkway in person. (It's only missing the poutine!) The Canadian Rockies virtual field experience can also be utlitized as a pre- or post-trip exercise for students actually visiting these sites, such as the Northern Virginia Community College "Regional Field Geology of the Canadian Rockies" course. Highlights from the virtual field trip (Athabasca Glacier, Miette Group sediments, Helen Lake stromatolites, debris flows associated with the 2013 Bow River floods, deformation associated with compression and terrane accretion) will be featured here, as well as an opportunity for feedback and site documentation requests for version 2.0.