Monday, October 14, 2013

Earth Science Week 2013

Earth Science Week, organized yearly since 1998 by AGI, began yesterday. This year's theme, "Mapping Our World," is designed to highlight "the many exciting uses of maps and mapping technologies in the geosciences."

For my small part this year, I noticed a map at ESW that shows links to a Google Maps map showing earth science organizations for each state. The one for Nevada, for example, can be seen here.

I went a little bit farther and added each organization and location on the map (generated originally by user ESW, Earth Science Week) to a map of my own, to which I added a few other organizations. That map is embedded below.


View Nevada Geological Organizations in a larger map

I was working on this post last week, when at some point my computer or browser or both went into overload or freezing mode, and I had to reboot, somehow losing the draft of the post in the process. I had added only a few Nevada geological organizations to my embedded map; all the ones I added consist entirely of statewide and chapter meeting places of the Geological Society of Nevada.

The GSN website has a large number of geological links — to state, U.S., Canadian, and other foreign geological surveys, to various professional organizations, and to various State of Nevada departments and divisions. You will also find many other geological links, including several for the USGS. I had started to add the location of the USGS Nevada district office to my map, when I realized my small but increasingly time consuming project had been put in jeopardy by the U.S. government #shutdown. I couldn't find out where the district office in Nevada is located! (The district office referred to may be the USGS Nevada Water Science Center office in Carson City rather than a geologic field office, not sure.) Instead of the website linked to at this URL, I got the main USGS page and the following announcement:

Current USGS main page, retrieved 14Oct2013.
In any case, check out the other geological links at the GSN. And check out their interactive map showing locations in Nevada where their publications (mostly field trip guides from the many GSN symposia and biannual to yearly field trips.

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