Welcome to a brief introduction of Earth Science Resources on the Internet prepared for GEO 11, GEO 15 and GEO 120 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. This document is organized in two parts: The first, is a simple tour, giving you the briefest of introductions on how to find geoscience related things on the Internet and some examples of the types of graphics and documents that are available. The second is an extremely abbreviated list of pointers to resources and organizations.
This document was prepared by J.A. Rial. ( jose_rial@.unc.edu )
| USGS Home page | EOS, Earth Observing System | Volcanoes | Active Tectonics | Seismology |
| Weather and Environment | Paleontology, Paleoclimate | Complex Systems | Societies | Schools and Universities |
There are several World Wide Web (WWW) browsers (in the Mac the most popular is Netscape, with Internet Explorer a distant second. These notes were composed using Netscape 4.5.
One difficulty in navigating the Internet is to keep track of where you are. Since you can start anywhere and go anywhere in any order, it is easy to get lost and it may become difficult to find things. Worse yet, you can easily get carried away, start jumping from place to place and then forget where it was that the real important stuff was. Retracing your steps may prove to be a real challenge. To avoid this, make a Bookmark of the page you like as soon as you see it by clicking the bar menu on "Bookmarks", and drag to "Add bookmark". Netscape will automatically log your selection so that the next time you want to go back to the site all you do is to find its name in the Bookmarks menu and click (drag and release) on it. The record will stay on the list even after you quit Netscape. The browser will keep your bookmarks for as long as you want. If you eventually want to get rid of old bookmarks you simply edit your list by clicking (draging and releasing) on "View Bookmarks" in the Bookmarks menu.
The following link will take you to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a tour of the planets... This is a collection of many of the best images from NASA's planetary exploration program. Besides the excellent imagery, you will find information on the dimensions, orbital parameters, density, internal structure, atmospheric composition of each and every planet of the solar system, as obtained by the people who explore planets for a living
The Planets of the SOLAR SYSTEM
Bill Thoen of the Computer-oriented Geological Society (COGS) has put together an invaluable catalog of internet earth sciences resources. The Cornell Engineering library has prepared a useful "html" (hyper-text mark-up language) at:
http://www.englib.cornell.edu/geology_resources/ORES/earthscience.htmlChoose open location from the file menu and type in the address of the html version, or select it from your Bookmarks. Scroll down in the Table of Contents until you see: "2.5. Usenet Newsgroups." and click on that hypertext link. This will take you to another part of ORES where you will see a summary of the various USENET discussion groups involved with geology.
This is the strait of Gibraltar, of course.
The Earth Observing System (EOS) - the principal component of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth - will provide a major
comprehensive global observing system that will offer insights into the natural processes that govern our Earth as well as the possible
changes that may occur in the atmosphere, on the land, and in the oceans as a result of human activities.
Visit the most important component of the Mission To Planet Earth research program.
This is an example of the newest measurements of the sea surface topography. Ocean topography is a measure of sea level relative to the Earth's geoid (a surface on which the gravity field is uniform). Oceanographers use ocean topography maps to calculate the speed and direction of ocean currents in much the same way that meteorologists use maps of atmospheric pressure to calculatethe speed and direction of winds.
This image was produced from preliminary data from the joint U.S.-France TOPEX/Poseidon radar altimeter, a satellite instrument that uses radar to make precise measurements of ocean surface heights.
In this image, the maximum sea level (shown in white) is located in the western Pacific Ocean and the minimum sea level (shown in blue and purple) is around Antarctica. In the northern hemisphere, ocean currents flow clockwise around areas of high sea level, and counterclockwise around areas of low sea level. (This phenomenon is reversed in the southern hemisphere.) Although this image is derived from only 10 days of TOPEX/Poseidon data, it reveals most of the ocean circulation systems that have been identified by shipboard observations collected over the past 100 years, clearly demonstrating the utility of acquiring Earth system data from orbiting instruments.
Let's explore some of the more interesting and appealing aspects of the WWW: graphics and imagery. A good place to start is with the USGS Cascade Volcanic observatory home page where you can view a slide show of Mount St. Helens eruption of 1981. You may either select "Open Location" form the file menu and type the address below or simply click on it and you will be there in no time at all:
Cascades Volcano ObservatoryEach of the small images that you see on the left side of the page can be viewed at full resolution by clicking on them. If you are interested in a little more general summary of recent volcanism, you might try the Volcanoes Pages of the Michigan Technical University:
MTU Volcanoes Web Sitewhere you can get a recent update on the eruptions at Rabaul, New Guinea. The space shuttle photo of the plume from Rabaul is particularly impressive!
Also, EOS home page provides access to a particularly nice slide show on the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and its effects on global climate.
EOSThe Active Tectonics initiative is intended to enhance multidisciplinary research on active tectonic environments. More information can be found in
Resources Related to Active Tectonics
The home page for Caltech's Seismological Laboratory is :
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/seismo/seismo.page.htmlYou can also see the SEISMOGRAM of the DAY from Caltech's Seismo Lab.
If you would like to see just how earthquake epicenters are located and how earthquake magnitudes are determined, visit the Virtual Earthquake Laboratory. This is a great interactive link!
Or take a Fieldtrip Along the San Andreas Fault
IRIS, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology was formed in 1984 by twenty-six universities to serve as a national focus for the development, deployment, and support ofmodern digital seismic instrumentation. Today, membership in this non-profit consortium numbers over ninety institutions and supports the experimental needs of earth scientists around the world. A primary source of motivation for organizations like IRIS is the great contribution that seismology can make to our understanding of the Earth. IRIS is funded by the National Science Foundation through its Division of Earth Sciences and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Management is provided through a small staff with headquarters in Arlington, Virginia and a satellite office in Seattle, Washington, site of IRIS's Data Management Center. IRIS home page is at
http://www.iris.washington.edu/
Click on the above picture to see one of the movies depicting different types of rupture along the Hayward fault. The model clearly shows areas within the bay sediments in which the waves are amplified or resonate with the underlying geologic structure. This is earthquake prevention, in many ways an approach to earthquake hazard mitigation more likely to save lives and property than earthquake prediction.
The US Geological Survey maintains an Earthquake Information web site where the latest California and world earthquakes are reported. The web site includes useful information related to earthquake preparedness, the physics of earthquakes, earthquake detection, etc. For instance, the Near-Real-Time Earthquake Bulletin gives a list of the most recent earthquakes world-wide, with epicentral coordinates, focal depth, magnitude and other relevant parameters.
Other places of interest include
If you are interested in Cladistics here is your Web connection:
http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/tree/phylogeny.html
Paleoclimatology has become an important area of research where earth and planetary scientists, mathematicians, physicists, biologists, chemists and many others join forces to study one of the most intriguing areas of research in geology: the geological history of climate. Paleoclimate data is extensive and easily avilable. Take a look and download some of the ice-core data fresh from Greenland!, at:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html
The last few years have seen an extraordinary growth of interest in Complex Systems. From ecology to economics, from particle physics to parallel computing, from the evolution of life to geophysics, a new vocabulary is emerging to describe discoveries about wide-ranging and fundamental phenomena. Many of the terms have already become familiar: artificial life, biocomplexity, cellular automata, chaos, criticality, fractals, learning systems, neural networks, non-linear dynamics, parallel computation, percolation, self-organization, and many more. Together they point to the emergence of new paradigms, cutting across traditional disciplines, for dealing with complex systems.
There are many sites on the Web where you can find information about Fractals. I recommend the following one: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Edu/Fractal/Fgeom.html
A self-similar structure commoly found on earth. Its fractal geometry is well developed.
Have you ever wonder why careful geologists always include a scale or reference when taking a picture of geologic interest? The reason is that if they didn't, the actual size or scale of the object pictured could not be determined. This is because most geoforms are self-similar, i.e., a fold 1 cm long looks quite the same as if it is 10 meters or 10 kilometers long. The same with most fault systems, layering, foliations, coastlines, topographic features, drainage patterns like the one above, etc. Self-similarity is a clue to the origin of many physical systems whose internal dynamics may be complex, in the sense that the system is at a critical state between chaos and order; a condition that has been called a self-organized critical state. A very readable account of Self-organized criticality is in the recent book by Per Bak " How Nature Works"
For many years geologists have complained that classical math and physics are too simplistic in their representation of nature to be useful to the geologist. Now there is no more excuse available. Fractal geometry, chaos theory and the science of complex systems do accurately represent many geosystems. Learning about fractals and chaos theory will considerably extend your understanding of geosystems and the workings of nature.
Even evolution is involved...Steve Gould has this to say about fractals and evolution: "Finally, this pattern of long stasis, with change concentrated in rapid episodes that establish new equilibria, may be quite general at several scales of time and magnitude, forming a kind of fractal pattern in self-similarity " (Sc. American, Oct 1994).
http://www-vl-es.geo.ucalgary.ca/VL/html/es-orgs-by-location.html
VIOLENT EARTH, An introductory geoscience class (GEO 13)