Chapter 1 Resources
Earth Systems

The Earth System

Gneous Rock Classification,
James Madison University
Find a handy chart with hot links for the mineralogic identification of different types of igneous rocks.

Rock Identification Key,
Don Peck
This easy to navigate key has been designed and written to assist children and adults in identifying the common rocks they find in their back yards and on memorable vacations.

Water Cycle Movie,
NASA
While it's a little large at 44Mb the animation does a clear job of demonstrating all of the aspects of the water cycle and includes what could be interpreted as "lake effect" and "orographic lifting". The link to the movie is on the right side of the (NASA) page.

Back To Top

Getting Acquanted with GIS

Looking into Earth with GIS,
SERC
This chapter of the Earth Exploration Toolbook provides an excellent introduction to GIS (geographic information system). Users work with data from a seismic wave model in a freely available GIS program, ArcVoyager SE.

Using Globe Data to Investigate the Earth System,
SERC
In this chapter from the Earth Exploration Toolkit, classes can access and graph environmental data that has been collected by students who participate in the GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Program. Then they use GLOBE's graphing tool to compare several variables and interpret the graph to examine evidence of Earth system processes. This chapter highlights the opportunities for using GLOBE data to introduce basic concepts of Earth system science.

WebGIS,
WebGIS.com
This site provides one of the cleanest, quick loading interfaces for access to GIS datasets including terrain, land use and land cover (LULC), and Digital Line Graphs (DLG). Terrain data includes USGS 7.5-min DEM and 1-Degree Native Format for United States and GTOPO30 Format Worldwide. Coverages are available both in the lat-long and UTM formats, making conversion between these popular formats unnecessary.

Geospatial Data Gateway,
USDA
This is one of the oldest spatial data portals on the Internet for base data to analyze within a GIS environment. It still is one of the best. It allows you to select the projection (geographic, UTM, state plane) before you download data. Themes include Digital Orthophotoquads, soils, precipitation, temperature, topographic maps, map indexes, hydrologic units, and common land units. One can search for available data by geographic area such as county or state, use our point and click map tool to find your area of interest; using a gazetteer, or by entering latitude and longitude coordinates. One can also search for data by theme, such as digital ortho imagery, digital elevation models (DEMs), or soils. Then, view a thumbnail or sample of the data you've chosen to know if you want a copy of the data. If you do, you can either download the data directly onto your machine, pick it up free via the FTP site after you receive an email telling you where it is, or buy it on a CD.

Back To Top