VIRTUAL GEOLOGIC HIGHWAY GUIDES ACROSS EASTERN ALASKA

Exciting virtual geologic highway guides are designed for Eastern Interior and South-Central Alaska in order to clearly describe, explain, and illustrate the nature, origin, and geological evolution of a complicated part of the North American Continental Margin. The guides provide an understanding of the major geologic units and their tectonic origins along three sets of major highways – the Pipeline Highway Road Guide (for 111 sites proceeding northward along Highways 4, 2, and 11), the Alaska Highway 1 Road Guide (for 65 sites proceeding northwest to northeast), and the Parks Highway Road Guide (for 51 sites proceeding northward). Each site can be viewed independently from Hot Links (hyperlinks) on an interactive Eastern Alaska Geologic Map. For site descriptions the major features are: (1) GPS latitude and longitude; (2) an oblique aerial overview of the region, adapted from Google Earth with overlaid geology; (3) color photos with explanations; and (4) descriptions of major geologic features. To acquaint users with regional geography and geomorphology, also included are annotated Google Earth Tours that are analogous to flying a small plane along the highways. You are invited to stop by the Poster Display and sample sites along the Pipeline Highway Road Guide and view the associated tour.

In addition to the virtual guides and tours, the geologic highway guides can also be used for a physical trip, either in paper format or on tablet or laptop computers, however, without features obtained by Internet (Web) access.

The virtual geologic guides are part of the forthcoming E-Book on the Dynamic Geology of the Northern Cordillera (Alaska and Western Canada). This E-Book, that contains major new syntheses and interpretations of the geology and tectonics of the Northern Cordillera, should be quite useful for college and university earth science teachers, earth science majors, and professional earth scientists. The E-Book will be published on DVD and on the Internet. The publication, that will be not be copyrighted, will be available for free downloading, and free DVD’s will be available for the cost of postage. To receive an announcement about the release the E-Book, kindly send an E-Mail to the first author.