GIS APPLICATIONS IN GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION PART I: EXAMPLES FROM AUTO-TOURING ROUTE MAPS DEVELOPED FOR THE WEBSITE, INTHEPLAYGROUNDOFGIANTS.COM

As a teaching professional, I maintain a geologically-themed website, In the Playground of Giants (www.intheplaygroundofgiants.com); an ongoing effort to connect and direct my geological knowledge, my creative and leisure time interests, and my collaborative student research toward an educational goal. The website encapsulates my desire to provide a teaching tool for my students, as well as an online educational resource suitable for the vacation-goer seeking the basics, to the more academic-minded visitor wanting comprehensive details. It features a wealth of basic geological information, but focuses on regional, themed, geological “learning laboratories” by summarizing the available information on specific areas of outstanding geological significance, and by providing accurate descriptions of how to reach classical geological settings found therein, by car, bicycle, or on foot. The website is currently subdivided into sections that provide a general background in physical geology, more detailed information on the geology specific to each “themed” location (such as the volcanology and alpine glacial geology of the central Oregon Cascade Range), and multiple “field guides” that offer descriptive road logs and hiking trails in those themed areas. It is these latter field guides which benefit from maps developed using ArcGIS. In this poster, static maps of field trip auto-touring routes from the Oregon Cascade Range and Grand Canyon are presented which serve as models for web-interactive maps that can be viewed at a variety of scales and depth of information; smaller scale maps provide more general information on the auto-touring routes available in each themed area, while larger scale maps provide detailed information on specific stops along auto-touring routes described for each field trip, as well as trailhead locations for optional hiking trails. Each map features a color, topographic, shaded relief basal layer generated from 1/3 arc-second USGS DEM data overlain by layers displaying water courses, auto-touring routes, and specific stops described in the route’s road log, depending on the map scale being viewed. These layers were generated from a combination of “heads-up” digitizing of specific roads from USGS 7.5-minute topographic map raster data and from available USGS Topo Map Vector Data.