VIRTUAL GEOLOGIC HIGHWAY GUIDES ACROSS THE SOUTHERN CANADIAN CORDILLERA

Novel virtual geologic highway guides designed for the Southern Canadian Cordillera strive to clearly describe, explain, and illustrate the nature, origin, and geological evolution of this amazing tectonic regime. The guides provide an understanding of the major geologic units and their tectonic origins along two sets of major highways – a Southern Road Guide (for 71 sites proceeding eastward along Highways 4, 1, and 3), and a Northern Road Guide (for 41 sites proceeding westward along Highways 1 and 99). Each site can be viewed independently from Hot Links (hyperlinks) on an interactive Southern Canadian Cordillera 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 Southern Road Guide and view the associated tour.

In addition to the virtual guides and tours, the geologic highway guides can also be used, either in paper format or on tablet or laptop computers, for a physical trip, 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, which 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, which 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, kindly send an E-Mail to the third author.