Rockd
This one is
really great. Basically, it is a surficial geological map of the entire earth,
both continental and maritime. It can be laid over a map layer with countries,
states, and provinces and also a satellite map layer, both with on-off
switches. Zooming in you can see individual faults. The detail is great. You
can put a pin anywhere and it will give you the surface formation name and age
in both geologic age and in years ago. You also get a stratigraphic name,
description, comments, lithology, and references. The references are linked to
scientific papers. Some are just abstracts but many are full papers. The
dashboard is nice but only records data for your present location including
formation name, age, lithology, lat/lon, and elevation. Tabs include a really neat
paleogeography function where you can see your continental position on a paleo
map of the continent and oceans as they were then. You can toggle it back from
modern (which here is late Pleistocene showing glacial extent) to 750 mya well
into the Precambrian. For more detail there is a pull-down menu which you can
click on intervals of 5-10 my until you get into the Precambrian where there
are only three choices covering 150 my. Three maps are given: one of the whole
world, one of the continent, and the local scales at the time. Even paleo
lat/lon coordinates are given so you can see where the plate(s)/continent was
at the time. This would be fantastic for doing paleo-reconstruction, tectonic
event sequencing, depositional, and erosional studies. Another tab shows
minerals at your site, including metamorphic minerals and accessory minerals as
well as a list of minerals groups. All have chemical formulas, type, color,
descriptions, and references. A similar tab is there for fossils that shows
name, phylum, class, order, extant, global occurrences, age range, localities,
and nearby collections, distance from occurrences, nearby taxa, and
stratigraphy, and links to more information. There is even a Brunton compass
which utilizes your phone’s motion sensors! You can save your strike/dip and/or
trend/plunge measurements with standard deviations. They do mention that the
phone’s gyroscope requires calibration and that electrical currents, metals,
and metallic minerals in rocks can introduce errors. In the tutorial it says
you can tilt and rotate the map to get an oblique view of the landscape, which
is new in version 3, although I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Finally,
you can check-in at different places, record your trips, set up a profile, and share
and view others’ check-ins. This app is great fun for a geologist as well as
anyone studying geology or just interested in geology. Fantastico! I believe
the paleogeography part was developed by the developer of GPlates, another app,
which I hope to review as well.
Rockd: Location-Specific Sample Info
Rocked: example along Allegheny Front in Central Pennsylvania showing geologic map and mapped faults.
SoilWeb
This app allows
querying USDA-NRCS soil survey data. It was developed by the California Soil
Resource Lab at UC Davis in collaboration with the USDA-NRCS. You can get soil data
at your location with series and horizons within the series with color charts.
Details for each series include map unit data and survey metadata. There is
also a detailed description of each series and its horizons. Taxonomic class,
typical pedon, and type locations are given for each series. Range in
characteristics of the series and its horizons are detailed and competing
series, geographic setting, geographically associated soils, drainage and
saturated hydraulic conductivity, use and vegetation, distribution and extent,
other data, and remarks are also given. Another tab gives soil taxonomy, soil
properties on a graph for each property, land classification, hydraulic and
erosion ratings, forest productivity, and soil suitability ratings. You can
also link to UC Davis soil maps over ESRI map layers to see the series extent.
Soil Web: Site-Specific Example
Soil Explorer
This is a great app
for soil scientists. It is global but offers more detail in the U.S. where
soils are well mapped. Detailed maps are loaded for 16 U.S. states. The global map
includes color maps of soil order, soil moisture regimes, and soil temperature
regimes. The soil orders tab gives information about a particular soil order
when you click over a region. The global map: “is based on a
reclassification of the FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World (FAO/UNESCO, 1972 -
1981) combined with a soil climate map. It is the same as the Global Soil Regions
map published by the USDA/NRCS (Reich and Eswaren, 2005).” There is a map
soil order and draft maps of duric-calcic-gypsic-salic horizons and deep sandy
soils for the entire U.S. There are also detailed maps for Kenya and Peru. The
detailed maps of 16 U.S. states include: Dominant Soil Parent Materials, Soil
Orders, Natural Soil Drainage Classes, Aquic Conditions, Dark-Colored Surface
Horizons, Clay-Enriched Subsoils, Leached Acid Subsoils, Calcic Horizons, Swelling
Soils, Sodic Soils, Fragipans, Hillshade. Aerial Imagery (USGS) and Topography
(USGS Topo) layers are included.
Soil Explorer: Example: Soil Orders Map of Southeastern Ohio
Links:
Rockd.
rockd
Soil
Web. SoilWeb: An Online
Soil Survey Browser | California Soil Resource Lab (ucdavis.edu)
Soil
Explorer. Soil Explorer
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