CAPTURING HIGH-RESOLUTION PANORAMIC IMAGES OF COASTAL PLAIN CLIFFS: TAKING GIGAPAN TECHNOLOGY TO NEW DEPTHS IN THE VIRGINIA COASTAL PLAIN

The introduction of high-resolution panoramic images, collected by GigaPan technology, provides the geoscience community with novel approaches to documenting, preserving, and studying geologic exposures. Outcrops documented by high-resolution photography within the Coastal Plain of southeastern Virginia are sparse and many classic exposures are jeopardized by development, overgrowth, and constraints to accessibility. Furthermore, traditional photographs of tall and horizontally expansive outcrops have significant distortion because of insufficient distance between the camera onshore and the cliff exposure. In order to increase the number of documented outcrops in SE Virginia and to create high-resolution images with little distortion, we designed and built an ~9-foot tall tripod to which a GigaPan mount and point-and-shoot-camera are attached and then deployed offshore, in water depths up to 4 feet. This “aquapod”/tripod provides a stable platform for the GigaPan mount to work effectively at enough distance away from cliff exposures to minimize distortion. The resulting high-resolution nature of GigaPan images provide marvelous detail, including easy determination of lithologic facies and units, sedimentary structures (including grain size and sorting), and identification and assessment of taphonomic properties of fossils (e.g. life-position, disarticulation). Once the images are uploaded to the GigaPan server, they are accessible by any device that connects to the internet, proving valuable as virtual field experiences, digital data repositories and/or digital publications, and with GIS.