Public release date: 16-Mar-1999 Contact: Bill Steele ws21@cornell.edu Cornell University News Service Interactive Web Site Maps Geology Worldwide ITHACA, N.Y. A vast amount of geological data, previously only available to and understood by scientists, is now accessible to everyone, from educators to young students, through an interactive site on the World Wide Web created at Cornell University. The Geographic Information System Interactive Map Server, created by the Institute for the Study of the Continents (INSTOC) at Cornell, allows users to view and print out maps showing major geographic features of a region, along with such information as the location of earthquake faults, a record of earthquake occurrences and technical data about the events. It draws on databases created at Cornell over the past six years. "It's important to note that this is not just a digital library," said Dogan Seber (pronounced SHE-ber), a geology research associate who manages the site. "It provides a set of tools that make the data accessible to anyone, anywhere, both to researchers and to small colleges, even K-12 schools, to do science or education. You can just click and get what we took years to accumulate." Seber is a member of a research group working with Muawia Barazangi, Cornell professor of geological sciences. To make a map, users of the site select an area anywhere in the world by clicking and dragging on a map, and then choose the features they want to see, from rivers, roads and cities to topography, fault lines and earthquake records. Maps are displayed on the screen, and users can zoom in and out and add or remove features, then print out the results. The site is actually an interface to a popular Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program called ARC/INFO, widely used by professionals to combine technical data with spatial information. The software uses GIS standards, a method for storing and manipulating information that is linked to locations expressed in latitude and longitude. | |
|