One world, one map of what lies beneath

Bryn Nelson Columnist

The swirls of hot pink, lime green and turquoise might be mistaken for some kind of abstract expressionist painting if they weren’t so neatly contained within Canada’s national borders. Ditto for the softer pastels of Afghanistan and the streaks of color within the 28 other countries included in OneGeology’s newly unveiled digital map of the planet.

The color-coded global map, revealed last week in Oslo, Norway, aims to do for the Earth's varied geological layers what Google Maps has already done for its surface. Beyond OneGeology’s eye-popping palette, the new effort may have much to say about how the world views what lies below our cities, forests and even oceans.

“Understanding what’s beneath your feet is pretty important if you need to know about energy or mineral resources,” said Ian Jackson, chief of operations for the British Geological Survey and a OneGeology spokesman. The same holds true for understanding earthquakes, mudslides and volcanoes.  Even so, he said in a phone interview from Oslo, “the rocks don’t know political boundaries.”

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea requires countries to use bathymetry, or a detailed analysis of the morphology and geology of the seafloor, to settle disputed marine territories. Having a consistent geological map that extends across international boundaries and oceans, then, could be critical in resolving conflicts like the current scrum over potentially oil-rich Arctic regions.

One solution, devised by an ever-growing international consortium, has been to transfer already-existing data from geological surveys around the world to a Web-accessible format that can be easily searched, shared and added to.

Supported by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and nine other international bodies, the project is the flagship undertaking of what has been designated by the UN as the International Year of Planet Earth. When it officially began in March 2007, Jackson said, the goal was to have 10 countries on the digital map in time for last week’s International Geological Congress in Oslo. Instead, 30 countries were fully represented, and the list of participating nations hit 85 on Thursday when India and Sudan agreed to join. The maps are being compiled at a scale of 1:1 million, though many countries are already producing more detailed information.

Dale Setterholm, associate director of the Minnesota Geological Survey, said comprehensive geological maps are most often applied to managing hazards or natural resources such as minerals and water.

“The arrangement of geological materials beneath the surface determines where water collects, where water can move and where it cannot,” Setterholm said. In essence, it defines the locations of aquifers. “We’re constantly, these days, trying to strive for sustainable management of these resources. It’s hard to protect an aquifer if you don’t know where it is and how big it is.”

Broadening one’s geologic horizons through an easily accessible map may pay off in other ways.

“I think the greatest potential for surprise is once we look beyond our own boundaries,” he said. “I might understand the geology of Minnesota pretty well and I’m not likely to find any more surprises there, but if I look across the border into Wisconsin, maybe a feature that I’m looking at is part of a much larger feature that I wasn’t aware of.”

Peter Lyttle, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Program Coordinator for National Cooperative Geologic Mapping and Landslide Hazards, said rock formations can provide other global data such as clues about what the Earth’s climate was like when they were first deposited. Likewise, they can suggest whether they are liable to move again in the near future.

“For instance, if one knows the engineering properties of rock formations along the proposed path of a new gas pipeline, or interstate highway,” he said in an e-mail, “one could plan to avoid rocks and sediments that would slump or fail after construction, or you could avoid putting a new landfill in an area where the underlying rocks are highly fractured or unstable.”

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