Terrestrial Landscapes

Pictured above: Sand dunes at Death Valley National Park. Photograph by Paul Stone, USGS.

Geologic Mapping of the Earth's Surface

Geologic maps are uniquely suited to solving problems involving Earth resources, hazards, and environments. The USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program supports geologic mapping in many of the nation's park lands. Projects are selected in partnership with the National Park Service Geologic Resources Division and Inventory and Monitoring Program.

Pictured above: The new geologic map of Colorado National Monument, a section of which is illustrated here, is an example of USGS and National Park Service collaboration.

Technological advances in computing and spatial-data analysis in the last decade are embraced by the program to provide geologic map data in digital formats that can be used to assist in analysis and decision-making. Modern digital geologic maps are interactive electronic documents that put the Nation's earth science issues into geospatial frameworks. They capture the size, the shape, the depth, and the physical and chemical contexts of earth materials and they blend data display with the results of interpretive research. These are actually four-dimensional data systems. The fourth
dimension of time is crucial to assessing natural hazards and environmental or socio-economic risk. To read a geologic map is to understand not only where earth resources and characteristics are located, but also how and when these earth features formed.

Pictured above: This geologic cross-section through part of Grand Canyon National Park illustrates the geologist's interpretation of the rock structure beneath the earth's surface. This analysis of the third dimension, depth, was based on geologic mapping. Information about the fourth dimension, time, is represented by color coding and letter symbols.

New multipurpose geologic maps are being or have been recently produced in parks across the nation, including but not limited to Death Valley National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, National Capitol Region parks, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Joshua Tree National Park, Colorado National Monument, Point Reyes National Seashore, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Yosemite National Park. They are being used to address management issues as diverse as habitat identification, geologic hazards to humans and infrastructure, and protection of fragile cultural resources.

Pictured above: The USGS geologist, George Billingsley, describes the geology of Grand Canyon National Park to the National Park Service staff and local science teachers.

Pictured above: A map of landscape and surficial geology at Canyonlands National Park, Utah. The different colors on the map correspond to properties of surface materials and soil development. Scientists are comparing this information with maps of vegetation to test the hypothesis that landscape geology can be used as a tool to predict the distribution of vegetation types.

Water availability and quality are critical management issues in some parks. New geologic maps are being used in the development of ground-water flow models Death Valley National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Bandelier National Monument, Ozark National Scenic River, and Buffalo National River.

Surficial geologic maps and remote-sensing data from Canyonlands National Park, Mojave National Preserve and elsewhere in the arid southwest are two of the many data sets that USGS scientists are integrating to monitor and model physical, biological, and landscape changes in response to climatic and human-mediated forces. The research is coordinated by The USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program and the Earth Surface Dynamics Program in collaboration with the National Park Service Geologic Resources Division.