GRAND CANYON PANORAMA PROJECT: A TOOL FOR SHOWCASING AND SHARING A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE

Visiting Grand Canyon is an awe-inspiring experience; as any visitor can tell you. But if you venture deeper into the canyon, a variety of amazing shapes, colors, and forms emerge, but few people have the time, fitness, and experience to embark on such a journey. But there is another way to get there.

The Grand Canyon Panorama Project (GCPP) is a collection of hundreds of 360° high resolution, interconnected panoramas from the park. Larry Wieland, the author of the project, has been hiking trails there for 20 years, gathering photographs that he assembles into panoramas. Within a panorama, the viewer can see the locations of other panoramas visible within line-of-sight, and can jump effortlessly from location to location. Or one can see and click on the locations of panoramas on satellite imagery or topographical maps.

In the latest version of the project, with the help of the Arizona Geological Survey, Larry added U.S. Geological Survey maps to the project, as well as the ability to display contacts of geologic formations. In addition, panoramas can now include written narratives, where the viewer can click on links to pan and zoom the panorama to highlight the narrative content. The GCPP opens up vistas of landforms and geology of Grand Canyon to everyone and should make an ideal tool for instructing college and high school students on this important geoheritage site that exposes 100s of millions of years of Earth history.