Field map gallery
Southern Canadian Rocky Mountains to Canadian Arctic Islands
- Update: see at the end the Toad River Geology web scene using the original North American geological data model, at the same location as §4 below and the banner map above, but with the correct geology from the original Geological Survey of Canada map and no vertical exaggeration.
Early days
This is what started it, a social media post on stereo viewing. Be it in university field school in Alberta or Ontario CAN, or field work in the Rocky Mountains or Arctic Islands described next, I worked on stereo airphoto pairs... anyone remember those? I had to force my brain to make topography show high points up*. The trick? Do away with stereo lenses and make yourself look way past the photo toward an imaginary horizon, then your eyes remove parallax and restore the 3D view and right-side-up relief.
I didn't do that from forward-planning, but rather on-the-spot need during field work. Sitting on a windswept ridge to better see the geology across the valley, holding down a pair of air photos with mylar overlay with one hand, and drawing rock formation contacts & features with the other hand... do I have a 3rd pair of hands to hold a stereoscope? No! Besides if I did, I'd hold binoculars instead... to spot bears down the slope, rocks formations across the valley, or the helicopter pickup in the distance!
*: it's an optical illusion that relief appears inverted unless it's lit from the NW . And since most landscape is lit from the South in the Northern hemisphere, air photo and satellite imagery are prone to such 'inversion'.
Nihahi Ridge
An old slide showing the scale and beauty of the Southern Rocky Mountain Foothills (foreground) and Front Ranges (background), with me for scale (as geologists do). I spent a glorious summer in 1985 mapping there .
Front Ranges of the Canadian Rocky Mtns.
This is the nec-plus-ultra in field mapping, my thesis surpervisor Ray Price's ongoing fieldwork aged 80, with crisp lines as when he started in 1964 Operation Bow-Ahtabasca ...
Note: here is a video Operation Bow Athabasca that's a great recap. The book is also available from Canmore Museum & Geoscience Center .
This is the northeastern Icefields (visible in topo map underlay) Simpson Pass thrust footwall & hanging wall transverse ramps.
Toad River sheet
Just after 2000 I had occasion at Esri to make a digital model of that field map with Natural Resources Canada topography and geology using the North American geological data model .
See the YouTube video starting at this scene, and a live map update at the end.
Canadian Arctic Mainland
Later that summer I went south from "the snow that never left the ground". That was right across from King William Island, shortly before the first remains of the lost Franklin expedition were found. After their final discovery 40 years later, I was asked to pen a poem in memory of John Rae, the Scottish explorer who helped the search and had such such different Arctic technique to Franklin, for the John Rae exhibit in Stromness, Orkney. This story map details this.
Update
Here is Toad River Geology Webscene, same location as above, but with the correct geology from the original GSC map sheet, and without vertical exaggeration - go ahead and fly around...
Note: here is the 2000 paper by Jordan Hastings et al. proposing what became the geological data model used here, and precursor to the National Geologic Map Database Geologic Map Schema .