You can peel The Virtual Earth off your browser and modify it to your own requirements. This is to enable people to modify and maintain their own versions of the Virtual Earth. This will result in many variants of the Virtual Earth, but you can click here to obtain the latest version of the original page.
The Virtual Earth is mirrored at Oxford University in the U.K. It is also mirrored (on a daily basis) at Mikael Niklasson's page in Sweden, by Javier Sabadell at University of Zaragoza in Spain, and by Sam Toon at Liverpool University
Some of the features used in this document are the mailto: and news: URL's. The onus is on the user to ensure their browser is capable of a mailto: procedure and is configured for the news: procedure.
If you know nothing about the Web, then the on-line article by the USGS Training Material on the WWW and Mosaic, plus an Internet Resources Page. Telstra Corporation in Australia provides some on-line documents on Internet Guides and Papers on the Internet and the Web.
For more specific information on the Web you should read the FAQ for WWW. As Web connections are based on Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), and URLs are becoming a standard way of refering to connections on the Internet, then browsing Tim Berners-Lee's rfc on Uniform Resource Locators may be a good idea.
Some of the 'biggies' in the computing industry are running Web servers. These include Digital Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Cray Research, IBM, Intel, Novell Corpration, Microsoft and Apple Computers.
Commercial organisations are establishing web servers for both general information to the intenet community and to display their products. Some of the better sites include Info-Mine the Canadian based company Robertson Info-Data Inc. which provides mining information including company and property information, mining publications, a Kimberlite data-base, broker's research reports and more. MineNet by Tensor Technology is aimed at the mining industry but is more on the technical side. It also includes white pages of people interested in mining information on the net. The Northern Miner is a weekly magazine giving exploration results, onsite reports, company profiles and the like in the North American Mining Industry. It also has a mining industry data base with over 2800 entries.
The World Bank - Industry & Mining has links to useful sources of on-line mining and industry information.
The Investor Channel provides references to investments in the mining industry.
ImageNet by Core Software Technology is a geospatial data site which has an on-line archive and preview system for geospatial data. DeLorme Maps is more than a cartographic company producing top quality maps. Kovach Computing Services is a small company specialising in Dos/Windows statistical software, but it has a good list of sites for shareware and public domain software for the Earth Sciences.
John Harrop's The Geo Exchange is an annotated list of Applied and Commercial Geosciences sites.
The GIS World magazine also has a Web server. Several GIS Software companies have web sites, or other sites carry information regarding their software. Included are MapInfo on the internet, ESRI GIS site. Michael Scott of the University of South Carolina has created a page of Commercial Geography Companies.
The Fossil Company markets mineral and fossil specimens and their catalogue has been placed on their web page. Also located there is an excellent list of geology links, a Picture Gallery of Fossils and finally Information on UK Geology.
Geoscience Ltd is a UK company specialising in deep geotechnical services for the petroleum industry.
A Commercial environmental site worth looking at is INTERA Inc. which has links to related sites, a Software Index and links to publica domain software. Another site is Environmental Hydrosystems, a water resources and environmental consulting firm which offers a lot on the Net, including a Hot List of environmental, water resources and Earth Science links, plus the EnviroMod Data Warehouse Broker, to search all known pertinent sites to groundwater and environmental modelling.
Jorg Schulz-Rojahn has a FAQ on Earth Science Journals. Jorg's interest is in softrock and petroleum geology and this list reflects that interest.
Links to other pages with on-line journal information include Daniele Pinti's Journal On-Line which has links to 329 on-line journals for Earth Sciences with Table of Contents and/or information instructions for authors. Another is Wuchang Wei's Journal Page which has instructions about subscribing monthly Table of Contents of about 264 geoscience journals (the service is automatic and free)
Samizdat Press aims for the free distribution of Geophysical publications, books and software.
The Geography Dept. at the University of South Carolina is the www home of the Disaster Research Newsletter from the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Center in Boulder, CO. The Natural Hazard Research Centre at Macquarie University publish the Natural Hazards Quarterly. Back issues are also on-line.
The American Geological Institute has information on Silverplatter's GeoRef CD Rom data base. They also have the contents and information on the Geotimes Magazine. The Hyperspectrum Newsletter covers imaging spectroscopy for remote sensing, environmental monitoring, photobiology and military target detection applications.
UserNet is
the technical newsletter from Landmark Graphic Corporation, a supplier of
exploration and production info-systems for the Petroleum Industry. Its worth a
look. Science Magazine now produces an
Internet edition, as does the Journal of
Biological Chemistry The Historical Gazette is edited by
Bridget Smith. It is a local on-line historical magazine for Oregon region, but
is included here as there are great descriptions of the old gold mining camps,
gold mines (such as the Great Comstock Lode) and reports from early USGS
geologists like Waldemar Lindgren.
However, most of the modern browsers can now access a Usenet News
server directly, and subscribe and post to News groups. This uses the "news:"
URL, but your browser needs to be configured for this. Some of the news groups
of interest to geoscientists include: sci.geo.geology, sci.geo.petroleum, sci.geo.earthquakes, comp.infosystems.gis, and sci.geo.hydrology.
The Phoaks site collects url's that are posted to various news groups. These can either be accessed at the Phoaks site.
One of the better sites for news groups is DejaNews. This site archives what appears to be the postings to every news group available. Quick and power searches are possible, as are identifying which newsgroup will likely talk about a defined topic. This site must be added to your bookmarks.
Frequently Asked Questions for a particular news group are a good source of information. FAQs that have been approved by the *.answers moderators get archived at the RTFM server at MIT. The main ones for geosciences include Geoscience Resources Part 1 and Geoscience Resources Part 2 by Ingram, Petroleum Resources by Guthery, Science Data Formats by Stern, and the Stern's Meteorology FAQ in several parts: FAQ-Intro, Weather-Data, Research-Data, CD Roms, Net-resources, Print-Resources and State-Climatologists, and (another in a number of parts) Satellite Imagery FAQ (part 1), Satellite Imagery FAQ (part 2), Satellite Imagery FAQ (part 3), Satellite Imagery FAQ (part 4), and Satellite Imagery FAQ (part 5) by Nick Kew.
Some sites access these FAQ archives and automatically convert them
to hypertext documents and add a WAIS search engines. These are WAIS/FAQ
gateways and include the sites at Ohio
State, plus Universiteit
Utrecht, and also Oxford
University Libraries. The Geoscience
FAQs from Ohio State, and Geosciences FAQs
from Utrecht.
There is a Usenet news group for the World Wide Web, or Announcements of new web sites, as well as a Frequently Asked Questions on the Web.
The paper by McDermott on GIS Sites gives a list of GIS Resources. Ilana Stern's Meteorological Resources FAQ is also in hypertext, as is the sci.geo.petroleum FAQ, and the GIS FAQ by Lisa Nyman. Scott Yanoff's Internet Services List is the web format of the old Special Internet Connections.
Nick Kew and others produce the Satellite Imagery
FAQ. Nick has developed the Web
Thing which brings a new level of interactivity to the FAQ. It intergrates
the FAQ with a threaded bulletin board and a searchable data-base. The SATFAQ
may also be found at the WebThing as the Remote Sensing InterFAQ.
MIT have a searchable Index of Supplements to Published Papers in meteorology and oceanography. The index can be accessed by journal, author, newest entry or searched. A complementary site at GFDL is the Electronic Preprint Archive which has information about Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences e-prints.
Vincent Granville administers the Spatial Statistics Preprint Service where you can submit a paper, or read a description of, and download, a paper on spatial statistics.
The National Academy Press has put more than 1000 Books On-Line. NAP is the publisher for the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
Yahoo, A Guide to WWW subject lists plus a search engine. This site is the preferred general starting point for many people. GALAXY at Einet, and Zilker Internet Park are other popular starting points.
At CERN's Virtual Library can be found Earth Sciences, Geophysics, Oceanography Virtual Library, Cartography and Remote Sensing list.
The Argus ClearingHouse was formerly the clearinghouse for subject orientated Internet Resource Guides.
One of the newer, and more comprehensive catalogs for Earth Science connections is the Wadsworth Earth Science Resource Center by Wadsorth Publishing.
The Geosciences link at EINet which includes topics in geochemistry, geology, geophysics and meteorology.
Bill Thoen's and Ted Smith's On-Line Resources for Earth Sciences, or ORES is a well catagorised and searchable listing links in the Earth Sciences and related fields. It has pages for the following catagories: Geography and GIS, Geology, Oceanography and Weather, Meteorology and Climate. Each category will have entries for EMail Lists, News Groups, Documents and FAQ's, Journals and Periodicals, Data and Software, and Other Hyperlink Resources. This site (it actually actually located on 2 web servers) is destined to become the premiere web sites for geoscientists.
The Anon Web Server at the University of Houston, Texas, is aimed at those interested in mathematics, computers and geosciences and the publications of Mathematical Geology and Computers in Geosciences. It has pages on Anon Columns which provide information about how and why readers of Computers and Geosciences were using the Internet as part of their academic and research efforts, the Virtual Geosciences Professor which deals with geology course resources on the internet, plus sections.
One of the main Earth Sciences server registers can be found at Earth and Environmental Sciences at the USGS. This index has catagories for Climate, Earth Sciences, Earth Quakes, Environment, GIS, Hydrology, Oceanography, and Volcanology.
GeoWeb is a well maintained and categorised list of Earth Science connections maintained by Gareth Mills.
The Oil Link is perhaps the biggest list of links for the oil and gas industries, and it is well catagorised.
A detailed register of seismological connections is found at Seismosurfing. This register includes Web, finger, ftp (anonymous), email and bulletin board connections. Another Geophysics site is Dr. Furuse's Prospectings of Geophysics and Tectonophysics which has a very exhaustive list of geophysical and geological connections.
Steven Schimmrich maintains the Structural Geology Internet Resources. Another extensive list of Other Useful Geological Links is at the Norwegian Rockhounds Web Server. ENVision is an Internet based environmental consulting firm, and they maintain two very good listings, the Environmental Science and Engineering and Geology. Each link comes with a description of what is on each site. Another list is the Jewels of the World Wide Web from Bobs's Rock Shop. The Institute of Mineralogy at Clausthal in Germany has an index of mineralogical sites, plus a photo image mineral collection. Russ Jacobson maintains the Earthnet Info Server. It is another detailed collection of Earth Science based links and is a service of the ISGS Educational Extension Unit.
For a listing of petroleum related sites, visit the Petroleum and Geosystems Sources page at the University of Texas, Austin.
The Dewey Subject Catalog gives a list of links classified according to the Dewey numbering system. Gis Net Sites by Jim Aylward used to be Frank Smith's page. It is an alphabetised hotlist. The Bureau of Land Management at Denver, CO, has a long list of links to GIS, Map, Metadata, GIS utilities and related sites. Refer to the section below on Satellite Imagery, Maps and GIS for additional links.
The Earth Environmental Science Center, or EESC, maintains a hydrology index. It has as its catagories General & Miscellaneous Resources, On-Line Data Sources, Hydrology Related Discussion Groups, Hydrology Related Mailing Lists, Scientific Societies and Research and Educational Organisations. Problems have been experienced with this url, so an alternative URL was made available.
For those interested in the Antarctic, the British Antarctic Survey is a good starting point.
The Australian Resources Links has connections to various web sites in Australia, including AGSO, the CSIRO and its divisions (Water Resources, Petroleum, Division of Minerals etc), Landcare Web, Center for Australian Regolith Studies, plus many more.
Macquarie University's Atmospheric Science area maintains a comprehensive Internet Resources page, which includes many acronym searches, conferences, libraries, search engines, indexes and much more. It's worth a visit.
The December List is a comprehensive collection of information sources about the Internet and computer-mediated communications.
Other on-line magazines for gaining information do not appear to be
updating their information. These include Internaut and Matilda in Cyberspace,
a what's new on the Web in Australia, and WebNews by the
University of Alabama at Birmingham which attempted to archive and catagorise
announcements of new web sites, services and software gleaned from various
Usenet News Groups.
For Harvest, look for Brokers. There is the Query Web Home Pages and the Server Register Query whery queries can be made by subject.
Other robots, worms, spiders and crawler sites include Web Crawler from Washington Univeristy and the WWW Worm from Colorado and the RBSE URL Search.
Another search engine not to be missed is ArchiePlex. This is an Archie gateway to the Web. It can help locate files on anonymous ftp sites around the world. This site is the link to all the ArchiePlex servers.
Nick Kew, who maintains the Satellite Imagery FAQ, has developed a new service. He has integrated a threaded bulletin board with a searchable data base to make the SATFAQ interactive. It is called the Web Thing (registration is required), and the FAQ is at the InterFAQ.
Various sites are combining these various search engines into one web page. NEXOR's CUSI is a unified interface for several search engines, as is the CUI/W3 page from University of Geneva. Some all in one pages give the ability to submit searches to a variety of engines divided into a variety of categories like Software, People, News, Web. The All In One Search Engine Page by William Cross and Albany Net is one such site is perhaps the best of these, with searches possible in the following catagories: the WWW, General Internet, Special Interest, Software, People, News/Weather, Publications/Literature, Technical Reports, Documentation, Desk Reference and Other Interesing Searches/Services.
Many of the search sites listed above permit people to access their search servers directly from their own site. It is possible to create a web page which will present a forms based page to the requesting client, and then submit the search request to the appropriate server for processing. One such page is the The Internet Search Page. You may pull any of these pages down and incorporate them into your own HTML documents.
There are not many searches available pertaining specifically to the Earth Sciences. On such site is the Earth Pages from the Goddard Space Flight Center.
Jughead is a gopher menu search facility which will search the upper levels of gopher menus and provide the user with a list of links. Some sites with Jughead searches include Washington and Lee, PSINet, and the University of Birmingham.
Veronica searches the menus on gopher servers. Some sites with Veronica include Washington and Lee, PSINet and the Australian Veronica Server.
WAIS servers are servers with seachable data bases. Some WAIS sites include Washington and Lee, Rice University. Washington and Lee University has an extensive set of connections and searches for finding internet resources. Included are Explore Internet Resources for searching INDEXES (wais and others), Searching for FILES (Archie, ftp), Searching for LISTSERVs, Searching for SUBJECTS, and USENET News Reader; NetLink Server for finding information, and Finding Gopher Resources
The gopher server at Energy Minerals Resources, a part of the Canadian Geological Survey, has a section dealing with mining information in Canada. This includes mining production information, information by metal, prices and forecasts.
Many universities have telnet access to their on line catalogs. Some on-line library catalogs on the east coast of Australia include Macquarie University, The Australian National University, Monash University and University of N.S.W. There is a World Libraries Link at the ANU. These sites are most likey of little or no interest to people outside of Australia, but they do show another connection type of the Web.
The Global Land Information System, or GLIS, is an interactive source of land information for use in earth science research and global change studies.
The USGS has a branch for Global Seismology and Geomagnetism for earthquake lists, epicenter determinations and geomagnetic field values. This site will time you out quickly. Another geophysical site is the World Paleomagnetic Data Base
The Classroom Earth from CIESIN is an environmental education BBS site, but the registration procedure is overly long.
As a final telnet connection, there is JANet, where you can connect to all UK systems via JANet, but you need to know where you want to go.
TILE.NET is a project by the Walter Shelby Gr. Ltd. It is a web site that links to all the discussion groups on the Internet, with the data comming from the "list global" listserv command. You can also list ftp sites and newsgroups.
The Presbyterian College at Clinton, South Carolina, maintains the List of Mailing Lists and Discussion Groups where searches can be made for publicly available Mailing Lists, List of Lists and Directory of Scholarly Electronic Conferences. Mentioned previously is the Washington & Lee Gopher Server where it is possible to search for listservs.
One catagory in each geoscience section in the new ORES is based
on related Mailing Lists, as the following connections indicate (NOTE that
some of the following pages may not yet be posted): Geography and GIS
Lists, Oceanography
Lists, and General Geology
Lists.
The BIBSYS Search lets you search for bibliographies in the fields of Author, Title, Free text, Dewey and ISBN/ISSN number.
Another site, mathematically orientated, is GASP, or the Globally Accessible Statistical Procedures which aims to make statistical routines easily available over the Internet. Some of the procedures are done via forms, and others by JAVA applets. The Regression applet lets students add points to a regression line by clicking on the mouse button and note the changes to the analysis.
There will no doubt be a boom in Java pages for Earth Sciences
especially as JAVA enabled browsers become commonplace.
Web Elements by Mark Winter at Sheffield University shows a chemical data base which need not be accessed by key-word entry. There is also Reduction potentials, Isotope abundances, Electronic configurations and Ionization enthalpies with links to things such as geological, crystallographic, biological data physical data (and more). A great on-line data base.
Catologues of samples can also be placed on line, as the Ecole des Mines de Paris have done with their Mineralogy Museum (refer to the section below on Museum Display for a fuller description).
The Volcano Page from Michigan Technical University is starting to build up a data base on volcanoes with information on location, geological setting, petrology, eruption history, imagery and other information. It includes information on recent volcanic activity. Along similar lines is the NASA EOS IDS Volcano Team, the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory which is part of the USGS Volcano Hazards Program an has links to other volcano sites, and Alaska Volcano Observatory which has good information on volcanism in Alaska. The USGS Hawaii Volcano Observatory has (nearly) weekly descriptions of activity in the Hawaiian volcanoes in its Volcano Watch Reports. Another volcanic site is the Electronic Volcano which contains information, maps, photos, texts and other links on active volcanoes and volcano resources.
NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) have a a number of Web sites to provide researchers access to the entire NASA Earth Sciences Data Collection. These are known as Distributed Active Archive Centers, or DAACs. The Information Management System (Version 0) allows users to search for and order data from several data centers in a single session (the GUI version requires an X-Windows or emulation. The Global Change Master Directory, or GCMD, provides directory-level metadata searches and directory-level information for NASA's EOSDIS program.
DAAC sites include: EDC, the Eros Data Center for land processes; CIESIN-SEDAC, The Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network - Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center for human dimensions of global environmental change, GSFC, Goddard Space Flight Center for upper atmosphere, global biosphere, atmospheric dynamics, geophysics; JPL, Jet Propulsion Labs for physical oceanography; LARC, Langley Research Center for radiation budget, tropospheric chemistry, clouds and aerosols; MSFC Marshall Space Flight Center for hydrologic cycle; NOAA SAA, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration - Satellite Active Archive for satellite data (atmoshere, land, ocean, earth sciences, remote sensing); NSIDC National Snow & Ice Data Center for snow and ice, cryosphere and climate; ORNL, Oak Ridge National Lab for biogeochemical dynamics, and finally the Physical Oceanography DAAC which is a scientific data distribution site for Topex/Poseiden images, AVHRR Pathfinder data and other on-line data and data catalog.
As an example, it is possible to browse the data set, including the AVHRR Land Pathfinder imagery, and order data on-line, from the Goddard Space Flight Center. The NOAA/NASA Pathfinder Oceans SST Products data for 1987, '88 and '89 is now available. This data is of improved quality over earlier products, and some data can be previewed before downloading.
Earth Observing System (EOS) sites include ECS Data Handling System; Mission To Planet Earth, the Volcanogeny Team which has been mentioned previously.
There is alot of information available from the USGS Web servers. There is an Index of On-Line Data that it maintains, the The FDGC Manual of Geographic Data Products, GeoData, Cartographic Data, Water Data, National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse for finding geospatial data and Publications List. The US GeoData site is associated with the EROS DAAC. It contains ftp access to Spatial Data Transfer Standard information, public domain software and a variety of USGS digital data sets such as 1:2,000,000 and 1:100,000 Digital Line Graphs and 1:250,000 and 1:100,000 Land Use and Land Cover Sets.
The Various divisions of the USGS have Web servers. Some have already been mentioned. Others include the Water Resources Division in Colorado, the Marine Geology Web Server for information on the National Marine and Coastal Geology Program and the Menlo Park Server for earthquake information, the Global Change Research Program, and the Morrison Research Institute which aims to reconstruct the evolution of the Lower Jurassic environments, climates and so forth. For those interested in Mining, the USGS has the Minerals Page. The Branch of Geochemistry also has a presence on the Net. The Marine Server has information on marine and coastal geology from the research in marine sanctuaries undertaken by the USGS. The final connection is to the list of Internet Resources which has a collection of USGS and US governmental branches, agencies and departments, amongst other collections.
The U.S. National Geographical Data Center, (NGDC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its series of environmental data centers manages a series of on-line data services in the fields of Solid earth Physics, Solar Terrestrial Physics, Marine Geology and Geophysics, Paleoclimate Program and DMSP Satellite Data Archive. Within each field there is also a World Data Center A. Some of these inventories are fully searchable via forms, such as Marine Geology and Geophysical On-Line Inventory Searches. You can also search the NOAA Data Catalog using Mosaic forms, or the NOAA Directory by Telnet.
Other Data Centers run by NOAA include the National Climate Data Center, the National Oceanic Data Center, and the Environmental Information Services.
The Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory has data from a variety of research projects, including the RIDGE Multibeam Synthesis Project which serves multi-beam bathymetry data of the world's mid-ocean ridge systems.
The Australian Geological Survey Organisation maintains the National Geoscience Database which has databases in the fields of biostratigraphy, environment, geophysics, groundwater, marine, minerals, petroleum and regional geology/geochemistry. Another one is the National Resources Information Catalog or NRIC. This is a meta database of descriptions of some 4,500 data sets and related information about Australian natural resources.
The Australian Government, through the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (AGSO), has initiated a project which aims at a coherent accessability of Geoscience resources on the internet. This is the Australian National Geoscientific Information System or @ngis. It will be a new national geoscience information system. It will not duplicate the current information, but will make geoscience information and data more readily locatable and accessible by building linkages between people and organisations who can provide the information and those seeking it. The Questions & Answers page has additional information plus Australian Geoscience Connections.
The WWW Earthquake Locator from Bruce Gittings and Edinburgh University is an excellent example of what is possible using the Web and Internet. It relates the work being done at Edinburgh in building an earthquake analysis system using GIS and data dynamically gathered from the Internet. This is a MUST site to visit.
The Current Seismicity Lists at Menlo Park gives the current listings of earthquake and seismic activity. This site also has the Hot Earthquake News with links to information on recent large events around the world. The National Earthquake Information Center located on the USGS Web server, is the World Data Center A for Seismology. The Weekly Seismicity Reports from the USGS are available by an ftp connection and have record seismic events from around the world, the USA, central California and San Francisco Bay dating back to April 2nd, 1992. Global seismological data is archived by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, (IRIS), from the IRIS Data Management Center. The Smithsonian Institute has a home page for the Global Volcanism Program. Included here is the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, an on-line bulletin describing the volcanic activity for each volcano from around the world.
The NSF Geosciences UNIData is a prototype for an Integrated Earth Information Server. Participating universities provide information servers which captures, stores, processes and displays realtime environmental observations from a variety of observing systems. Another goal of this system is to provide tools for use with the data. The University of Illinois has created a set of instructional material for meteorology and remote sensing.
One differing type of changing data is plate motions. The University of Tokyo, Ocean Research Institute, has the Plate Motion Calculator where plate motions can be calculated using the most recent plate motion model, NUVEL-1A.
The Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas has some of the better GIS web pages around. The section on Information on GIS which has links to GIS and Arc Info tutorials, map servers, Usenet News Groups, Government, Military and international servers. Another section has links to US GeoSpatial data sets by Stephan Pollard, including general catagories of Hydrologic, Hazards, Geologic Base Mapping, Geology; There is also a Clearinghouse for Subject-Orietated Internet Resource Guides.
Dubois Gregoire's homepage on Geostatistics and GIS has information on the AI-Geostatistics mailing list, links to the list archives, software, conferences and courses, and the spatial statistics faq (as yet incomplete).
Care to learn about Arc/Info and GIS, then Shane Murnion's GIS Analysis with ARCINFO will give you an introductory course. For an on-line GIS application and to construct your own map of Canada, you can try The National Atlas Information Service for www based GIS, or their home page for other geographic maps and information. Geography at Edinburgh University has several pages on GIS, the GIS Home Page has connections to the GIS FAQ, Bruce Gittings DEM Catalog, and the AGI GIS Dictionary. This site also has Map Preparation which allows you to build maps which can be displayed and manipulated via the Web, and the Atlas Application in which plots of plate tectonic boundaries can be generated in real time. Perhaps one of the better "build a map via the web" sites is the GrassLinks V2.0 Public Access GIS from Berkely. Along a similar theme in Australia is the Distributed Spatial Data Library.
CGRER, or the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, have some very useful links, including Maps and References and Geodata Information Sources. Another userful site is the Map Projection Home Page by the Geography Dept. at Hunter College.
The AGI and University of Edinburgh have collaborated to bring you the Dictionary of GIS.
A site for GIS and RS connections is at Utrecht University.
Oliver Weatherbee maintains the Remote Sensing/GIS/GPS Data and Information. Another GIS Resource Pointer is by GIS in the Internet, This is the English language connection. Last, but not least, is the Remote Sensing Resources on the Web which is maintained by Bill Corner.
Ohio State University Dept of Geography has created several Internet resources for GIS and Mapping, including the GIS On-Line Master Bibliography, the John Snyders Map Projection Bibliography.
The Perry-Castaņedu Library Map Collection is a collection of over 230,000 on-line maps covering every area of the world. Odden's Bookmarks has a collection of links to cartography, maps and atlases, electronic atlases, map collections and cartographic servers.
Speaking of GIS and maps, the US Digital Relief Images by Ray Sterner from the 30 arc second DEM data. is worth a look. Ray has other images, including individual US states, ETOPO5 maps, yet more ETOPO5 images, plus NOAA AVHRR satellite imagery online.
Another site with more ETOPO5 images is available in the UK.
Remote sensing sites abound. Satellite images from Nexor, the EROS DAAC being the USGS repository for remotely sensed data. Another good remote sensing site is the JPL Radar Imaging server from the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. There is also available the complete collection of Topex/Posoiden images from 1992.
Arc Inc has created a 1 km global image based upon AVHRR data, with coloration correlated to space photgraphs. This large and detailed image is available in many forms, including photoprints and digital 24 bit color in resolutions of 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1 km/pixel.
Nick Short, Snr. of NASA Goddard has prepared The Remote Sensing Tutorial, a very large review of basic principles and applications with emphasis on space imagery of both the Earth and the planets. These pages are compulsory reading for anyone into Remote Sensing.
David Schneider from MTU has a page on the Introduction to Remote Sensing.
The Altimetry Atlas from the Delft Univeristy of Technology is an altimetry atlas computed from satellite altimetry data and includes gravity anomaly maps of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Another similar site is the NOAA Geosciences Lab
Sol Katz's Detailed Metadata Homepage is compuslory reading if you're into GIS, and mapping using a Web interface. It describes, and has connections to other sites, detailing metadata, spatial data, spatial geographic searches, spatial WAIS from the USGS, Mapper, NAISmap, various map browsers, interactive Grass and MapInfo. Basically, any sort of spatial interface via Web clients. This should be visited.
The Virtually Hawaii page at Univ. of Hawaii Satellite Oceanography Lab. has a great collection of satellite images, not only of Hawaii but of other significant natural events. Some images are real time.
The creation of maps is a seperate field of endeavour, but geoscientists should be familiar with some aspects of it. The Geography Dept. at the University of Texas at Austin have several pages of information. Included are Map Projection Notes by Peter Dana, Geodetic Datum Overview and the Coordinate Systems Overview. Surveying is another endeavour related to mapping. The On-Line Resources for Land Surveying is Clearinghouse approved.
For a collection of links on anything to do with maps, visit Mercato Mag's CyberSites. They also have a good Top Ten list.
The Dibblee Geological Foundation was established in 1983 to publish Tom Dibblee's mapping of California, which is not yet in print.
Navigation systems are playing an ever increasing role in todays world. One of the better sites for GPS is Peter Dana's Global Positioning Systems Home Page. This site was nominated one of GIS World's Best of the Net '96. Another site with good information on radionavigation systems is the U.S. Coast Guard's Navigation Center which has information on Global Positioning Systems, the Differential GPS in the US, the OMEGA System, and the Loran-C System.
For those interested in grid and mesh generation there is the Mesh Generation Page by Robert Scheidners, and the Meshing Research Corner a description of available literature on mesh generation by Steve Owens.
Of a related nature is the home page for Spatial Data Transfer Standard Information Site. STDS is a robust way of transferring earth-referenced spatial data between dissimilar computer systems with the potential for no information loss.
The Ocean Research Institute in the University of Tokyo is an excellent oceanographic site with a comprehensive register of other oceanographic servers. It also has a Reference Searcher which searches references from K.Tamaki's personal reference data base that has been constructed since 1985. Also included is the Interactive Hydrographic Map from the Levitus' 1994 dataset, which can also draw vertical sections of temperature, salinity, oxygen and nutrients, and the Plate Motion Calculator where you can calculate plate motions using the NUVEL-1A plate motion model
The Satellite Oceanography Laboratory at SOEST, University of Hawaii at Manoa, has a good collection of NOAA-14 and other real time and archived images.
A collection of Oceanography and related sites can be found at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Another list of Oceanography Links to the Web is at the University of British Columbia. It has a collection of links of organisations, tertiary institutions, on-line data and images, on-line numerical models, FAQ's and much more.
Thoen and Smith's ORES resource has an Oceanography
section.
Another museum to follow is the Dinosaur Exhibit at the Honolulu Community College. This is another on-line interactive museum with a narrated tour. Another paleontological museum is the Fossil Vertebrates at the Burke Museum which catalogs over 43000 fossil fish, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds and mammal specimens. The Natural History Museum at Bern, Switzerland, is also worth a visit.
The Museum On-Line Resource Review is by the Overall Knowledge Co., Inc. It has a keyword search/catagory search of its Directory of Museum Products and Services and of related web sites.
The PaleoNet system, located at Berkeley, is a system of links to listserves, web pages, gopherholes and ftp sites designed to enhance electronic communication amongst paleontologists. The Berkeley site is designated as PaleoNet West. A mirror in the UK is PaleoNet East.
One of the better "fossil sites" that I have seen is the Fossil Collections of the World. This is maintained by Simon Biggs and is very detailed and well organised.
Another annotated list of palaeobotanist internet links is the one maintained by Klaus-Peter Kelber.
Kevin's Page of Death with the attached Trilobites Page, and Prem's Fossil Page of trilobites, graptolites and Pennsylvanian plants, plus his other paleontological links are good starting points for palaeontology links.
The Hadrosaurus Foulkii is a tour of the world's first dinosaur skeleton find at Haddonfield, NJ, detailing the 1858 find by William Foulke and takes you on a guided tour of the site. The Burgess Shale is one of the most complete and well preserved invertebrate faunas anywhere. It is Mid Cambrian.
The Radiolarian Page will present updates and developments on biostratigraphy and tectonic implications of new radiolarian discoveries in the Canadian Cordillera.
Recent & Fossil Bryozoa are on the Web, and there is an on-line Catalogue of Bryozoan Types at the Swedish Museum.
Another link is to Wuchang Wei's Nannofossil Lab which has papers on nannofossils, coccoliths and nannoplankton, plus a Nannofossil chat room.
Not quite a museum display, the Volcano World is an information page directed at school children and visitors to the Hawaii Volcano National Park and Mt. St. Helens National Monument.
Another environmental site is the Environmental Protection Agency. This has searchable facilities of the high level pages. It has connections to other (US) governmental and environmental sites. EnviroWeb is advertised as the world's largest environmental online archive and the clearinghouse for all online environmental information. It has a good environmental resources section. To assist in Natural Hazards Reduction, the NGDC Natural Hazards Data links to the databases and information provided by the NGDC in several areas of natural hazards, including earthquakes, tsunami and world stress.
Environmental Hydrosystems, is a water resources and environmental consulting firm which offers a lot on the Net, including a Hot List of environmental, water resources and Earth Science links (which are created by an automated hot list generator, plus the EnviroMod Data Warehouse Broker, to search all known pertinent sites to groundwater and environmental modelling. Refer to The Soft Earth for their software links.
The Geomorphology Lab from Miami University has a list of links to Web Resources for Geomorphologists.
The Lake Data Web Page is a UN environmental program. The aim is to distribute new global environmental data and information for large lakes (>100 sq. km). It currently has 3 components, the MSSL Global Lakes data base, the MSSL Remote Sensing Lakes data base and the WCMC Lake Consortium data base.
Wuerzburg University maintains a good list of Links for Mineralogists. This has annotated links to internet resources for mineralogists, petrologists, crystallographers and geologists.
Geochemistry on the WWW by W. White at Cornell is a hotlist of web links related to geochemistry such as cosmological abundances, radioactive decay systems, web elements, on-line geochemical data and the Geochemical Earth Reference Model.
The Petrographic Workshop is a database of mineralogical information used in the identification process of rocks and minerals. Information is both textual and microscopic images. It is from the UCLA and is part of the Physical Sciences Learning Center. The Athena Mineralogy site has mineral lists with a systematic classification and is searchable. It also has links to other Mineralogy servers. Another great site with a systematic classification of minerals is Mineral Galleries from Amethyst Galleries Inc. Included is a Minerals by Class and a full text search, and a description of the Physical Characteristics of minerals.
Other mineralogical sites include Bern's Museum of Natural
History with various collections of rocks, minerals and ores from
Switzerland. The Smithsonian Institute in association with EINet have an on-line gem and
mineral collection. The Mineralogy
Museum at Ecole des Mines de Paris has placed its mineral catalogue on-line. The
catalogue of type specimens can be accessed by author, mineral, date of first
publication, atoms in chemical formula and holotypes, cotypes, metatypes,
author samples and dedicated samples. There is also a catalogue of best
samples, many with drawings and photographs.
The ANON Server at the University of Houston has the Virtual Geosciences Professor gives many links to Higher Education Geology Resources on the Web, categorised by Courses by Title, Courses by University, Course Resources and Field Trips. This is a 'must see' site for those interested in using the Web as a teaching aid.
Along a similar theme is the Virtual Library for Pamela Gore's Students at DeKalb College. Plenty of resources for her Geology 101 and Geology 102 courses. Look at the Students projects for the Fall, 1995 and Winter, 1996.
The Introduction to Petrology pages from UBC is a good use of using the Web to present course material to students.
Dave Waters has compiled the Resources for Earth Science Teaching. It is links of internet related material for teaching in the Earth Sciences organised into topics like Teaching Material Resources, Earth Science Education Resources, On-line course material in the Earth Sciences, Virtual Field Trips and Software Sources. Terry Gordon's WWW Teaching Pages is a compilation of WWW sites dealing with the use of WWW in teaching. A similar site is by Phillip Brown at the U. of Wisconsin, and is called Wondering, Wandering and Winnowing: the WWW and Mineralogy. It is a great site for students in mineraly on how to use the Web to seek information. It also has a link to their Crystal Structure Movies.
Specific Web based courses include Jack Rice's Introductory Course on Mineralogy at the University of Oregon and Lisa Tauxe's Earth Sciences 10 on Understanding Earth.
Another education site is the Physical Science Learning Center at UCLA. This operates under the auspices of the Science Challenge to promote the use of computers in physical science education, especially in introductory courses. The Earth System Science Education Program is a co-operative University based program in conjunction with the USRA. The ESSE Notes have a summary of new sites of interest for Earth Sciences. The University of Texas has established the Geography Virtual Department which attempts to link cirricula among Geography Depts. throughout the Internet and the Web. Links within this site include: On-Line Courses and Virtual Resources, being resouces for geographers and teachers such as GIS, maps, cartography. Other educational sites include the Geology Courses on the Internet from the World Lecture Hall, which currently has two courses available - Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Other Hazards, and Submarine Geology.
The Geoscience K12 Resources is an ongoing project to list relevant K12 Geoscience resources that are available on the net.
Why pick a career in Geosciences at all? Find out at Careers in Geoscience page from the University of Waterloo, thanks to a keynote speaker at NAGT-ES Toronto.
One of my favorite educational sites is the Virtual EarthQuake from the Dept. of Geological Sciences at California State University. This is designed for college and pre-college students to demonstrate the concepts of how an earthquake epicenter is located and how the Richter magnitude is determined.
The Computer Orientated Geological Society acts as a clearinghouse for information on methodologies, software and datasets for geologists with an interest in computers.
The University of Edinburgh's Geology and Geophysics Number Crunchers Forum aims to promote discussion and development of numerical methods and help spread computing experience.
Mineral collectors can visit the Rockhounds Page which has a variety of connections. Another collector's page is the Norwegian Rockhound. This has a collection of minerals found in Norway over the last 3-4 years.
Bobs Rock Shop doesn't sell specimens, but is a unique site in what it offers. Worth a look.
The Virtual Geomorphology is a 'virtual text book' on geomorphology with contributions from various authors. EUROLAT is the European Network on Lateritic Weathering and Global Environment at the Technical University, Germany. It has a good Virtual Library with Earth Science Journals
The Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne has two things of interest, the GeoGarden and the Web Accessible Diffractometer (you do need to obtain a password from IPFW). RockNet from Sandia is a rock mechanics based web server which has a good index for other related Web sites.
The Atlantic Geoscience Center has some pages of interest:
Along similar lines is Michael T. Garrison's WebSurfers Earth Sciences Review which is a bi-weekly review of selected web pages in Earth Sciences. Their HotLinks is fairly well done.
An Animation
of the Rotating Earth. The animation was developed with local display
software using the public domain ETOPO5 grid.
The USGS also runs an Ask A Geologist over the Web wher you email them direct, or you can click here to get more information. The Geologist's Lifetime Field List, by Terry Arcomb, is a list of essential and desirable locations for geologists to visit. This is a web version of an article by Lisa Rossbacher in the April 1990 issue of Geotimes.
You can also check out Ted Smith's Geosci-Jobs, an archive of the geosci-jobs listserv. There is also an Archive for Geosci-jobs.
The first connection is to the Scholarly Societies Project from the University of Waterloo's Electronic Library which aims to facilitate access to information about scholarly societies across the world.
Web servers can be found at The Australian Geological Survey Organisation, the UK Geoscience Information Group, the British Geological Survey, The Geomagnetism Group from the British Geological Survey, the British Antarctic Survey, the Geological Survey of Canada, the Atlantic Geoscience Center which is a branch of the Geological Survey of Canada, The Geological Survey of Finland, The Geosciences Information Group from the UK Geological Society, the Geological Survey of Japan, the Americal Geological Institute, (and their Member Societies), the Paleontological Society, the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. There is also the Association of Polish Geomorphologists. Finally is the United States Geological Survey, which is perhaps the icon of web servers in the Earth Sciences.
mail them or visit their home page.
