TELLING NORTH AMERICA'S GEOLOGIC STORY WITH ULTRAHIGH RESOLUTION GIGAPAN PHOTOGRAPHY, THE GIGAMACRO VIEWING PLATFORM, 3D MODELS, AND GOOGLE EARTH

The continent of North America is the result of billions of years of tectonic, erosional, depositional, volcanic, climatic, and impact processes. The GEODE project (Google Earth for On-Site and Distance Education) is a multiyear initiative to develop the next generation of digital geology teaching resources. Here, we demonstrate how key processes in the evolution of North America can be shared in an insightful, user-driven digital experience. We have built our virtual field experiences (VFEs) by combining ultrahigh resolution photography (gigapixel panoramas, or "GigaPans") with the enhanced functionality of the GIGAmacro gigapixel imagery viewer [it allows comparisons, annotations in many forms, and intuitive measurement], as well as 3D models derived from photogrammetry (Agisoft Photoscan, hosted by Sketchfab) and the well-established functionality of the desktop Google Earth program. Our repository of GigaPan imagery now exceeds 2000 images at a multitude of scales, as well as more than 120 3D models. These media can be the basis for telling dozens of North American geo-stories from a multitude of perspectives (e.g., sedimentological/stratigraphic, structural, paleontological, volcanological). VFEs from this project and other digital teaching curricula are posted online at http://geode.net/. 3D models are stored online at: https://sketchfab.com/marissadudek/collections/mid-atlantic-geo-image-collection, and our repository of GigaPans may be browsed at http://gigapan.com/gigapans?query=m.a.g.i.c.