GeolMapDataExtractor

v. 3.0 Richard W. Allmendinger 2012, 2013

If you use this program, please reference:

Allmendinger, R. W., and Judge, P. A., 2013, Stratigraphic thickness uncertainty and errors in shortening from balanced sections in the North American Cordillera: Geological Society of America Bulletin, 11 p., doi: 10.1130/B30871.1

[this reference will be updated when a full paper is published]

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Table of Contents
Disclaimer! ........................................................................................................................4 Introduction! .....................................................................................................................4 Quick Start !......................................................................................................................5 Program Interface!...........................................................................................................6 The Map Area ! ..............................................................................................................6 Data Tabs!....................................................................................................................7 The Overview Window!................................................................................................8 Datum Details Window ! ................................................................................................9 The Inspector Window !..............................................................................................10 Preparing the Map!........................................................................................................11 Reading in the Map and Setting the Scale ! ................................................................11 Georeferencing the Map !...........................................................................................12 Using the Different Modes!...........................................................................................15 Strike, Dip, Thickness!...............................................................................................15
3-Pt Problem!.................................................................................................................................15 Manual Entry of Strike and Dip!...................................................................................................15 Determining Stratigraphic Thickness !........................................................................................16 Set Errors !.....................................................................................................................................18 Statistical Analysis!......................................................................................................................20

Strike and dip only! .....................................................................................................20 Digitize Contacts!.......................................................................................................21 Topographic Prole!...................................................................................................22 Saving/Exporting your results!....................................................................................23 Text Files!...................................................................................................................24
Saving Data !..................................................................................................................................24 Exporting Data !.............................................................................................................................24 Recalculating saved results with different errors or scale !......................................................25

Exporting .KML Files!.................................................................................................26 Exporting Topo Proles as .SVG Files!......................................................................27 Appendix 1 Algorithms for Orientation and Thickness Calculations !.................28 Three point problem!..................................................................................................28
1. Subtract position vectors:!......................................................................................................28

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2. Take the cross-product !...........................................................................................................29 3. Make the cross-product a unit vector!....................................................................................30 4. Convert back to geographic coordinates!..............................................................................31

Thickness Calculation!...............................................................................................32
1. Transformation to the bedding reference frame !...................................................................33

Appendix 2 Geologic Map Sources on the Web! ....................................................35 USGS Geologic map server:!.....................................................................................35 Geological Survey of Canada Map Server:!...............................................................36 USGS Elevation_Service !..........................................................................................36

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Disclaimer
The software and documentation are provided on an as is basis, without any warranties of any kind, including, but not limited to, any implied warranties of merchantability or tness for a particular purpose. You assume the entire liability for the selection and use of the software, and Richard W. Allmendinger shall have no liability for any errors, malfunctions, defects, or loss of data resulting from or related to the use of software and/or documentation. Allmendinger shall not be liable to you, or to any user, for any indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages or lost prots arising out of or related to this agreement or your use of the software and/or documentation, even if he has been advised of the possibility thereof.

Introduction
Many national and state geological surveys now provide high resolution scans of their published geologic maps and cross sections, commonly for free. This provides a wealth of newly accessible data. GeolMapDataExtractor1 (GMDE) is a simple program designed to allow the user to extract, quickly and easily, to perform the following tasks using these scanned geologic maps: Carry out three point problems to determine the orientation of stratigraphic units, faults, and other types of geologic contacts Use the mouse to drag along a strike line; you type in the dip and the program automatically determines the latitude, longitude, elevation, and strike of the datum. The strikes and dips can be output to your favorite stereonet program or saved as .kml le for visualization in Google Earth using Tom Blenkinsops cool 3D symbols. Calculate the map thickness of stratigraphic units using any two points, one on the base and one on the top of the bed Digitize contacts in latitude, longitude, (and Eastings and Northings) and elevation using as many points as you want. These digitized contacts can be used in digital down plunge projections and can be exported via .kml les to GoogleEarth. Construct topographic proles (in the U.S. only) along a line of section marked with the unit boundaries, just by clicking on the boundaries and entering an annotation. Proles can be saved as .SVG les for use in your favorite (modern) graphics program

GMDE used to be called StrikeDipThickness but its name has been changed to reect signicantly increased functionality. -4-

For geologic maps in the United States and southernmost Canada, GMDE will use the U.S. Geological Surveys topographic elevation server to get the elevation of any clicked point if it has an Internet connection. This is slower than ofine access to a digital elevation model (DEM) but the advantage is that you dont need to know where to get DEMs and what formats to use. Otherwise the user will have to enter elevations by hand. For thickness and strike and dip from three-point problems, GMDE uses a simple, but previously undescribed, algorithm to calculate thickness that does not require that the point on the top of the bed be in the true dip direction from the point on the bottom of the bed (see Appendix 1 for details). The algorithm also does not need one to specify whether the the bed dips in the same or the opposite direction from the topographic slope, etc. Full error propagation is applied to thickness and three point problems.

Quick Start
The basic steps for using the program are: 1. Download a scanned geologic map on a topographic base from the appropriate web site (see list in Appendix 2). Depending on the source of the map, you may have to save it in a different format for reading in to GMDE. 2. Launch GMDE, select File>Open Map (!"O). Be patient; scanned map les are usually high resolution and thus large so they take a while to open. Maps are always displayed in the plot area at full scale/resolution. Note that if there is a lot of white space around the edge of the map the plot area may not change visibly. You can open an Overview window where you can see a much reduced version of the entire map. 3. Scroll to the map scale bar and choose Settings>Set Scale. Drag the mouse along the scale bar and enter the distance dragged on the map. If the topographic contours are in feet, then enter the distance in either feet or miles; if in meters then the scale should be specied in meters or kilometers. If you want to export the strike and dip data with longitude and latitude information, you will have to select Settings>Georeference and follow the instructions below. 4. Select the mode of operation from the Settings>Mode> submenu. Four different modes are possible: 1. Strike, Dip & Thickness choose this mode if you want to calculate map thicknesses of stratigraphic units. You will also, of course, have to enter the strike and dip of the unit either via a three point calculation or by clicking and dragging the mouse parallel to the strike line and entering the dip.
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2. Strike & Dip Only you can use this mode to enter just strikes and dips either by clicking and dragging on a strike and dip symbol on the scanned map or by carrying out a three-point calculation. 3. Digitize Contacts this mode allows you to digitize one or more contacts on the map. If the map is in the United States or southernmost Canada, GMDE will use the USGSs elevation data server via the Internet to get the elevation of each clicked points; otherwise, the user will have to enter the elevations manually (usually from the contours on the map). 4. Topographic Prole This mode is only useful when you are analyzing a map in the United States or southernmost Canada and get elevations from the USGS server. Click on each contact along a line of section and enter an annotation for the contact. GMDE will resample the line of section, get elevations for all of the points along the line of section, and construct a 1:1 topographic prole with each of the units marked. The prole can be saved both as a .TXT le for import into a spreadsheet program, or as an .SVG le for import directly into your favorite modern graphics program for further work. 5. From here, each of the different modes has its own workow, which are described below in Using the Different Modes, after a description of the program interface.

Program Interface
GMDE is a document oriented application meaning that each open window represents a different document which is independent from the other windows (like your typical word processing or graphics program). When you start the program, a new blank window appears; select File>Open Map to load a scanned geologic map into the map area of the window. If you want to open another map in a different window, rst select File>New to create a new window and then select File>Open Map to load a map into that window. If you just select File>Open Map again, it will overwrite the map that you had already loaded in and will not open a new window. The Map Area The map is always displayed at full resolution in the left side of the main window so that your mouse clicks are always as accurate as possible. The map does not have to be geocoded (e.g., a geotiff); it just has to have the same scale in all directions. GMDE will place the origin at the lower left corner of the scan and measure all horizontal coordinates based on that origin. The program does assume that North is vertically straight up on the map. If the map has been rotated during the scanning process, or it is
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in a UTM projection, you should rotate the map in a graphics program so Geographic North is at the top of the page and the right or left edge of the page denes a true NS line before reading the map into GMDE. You can measure distances and angles on the map simply by clicking and dragging the mouse in the map. Once you have set the scale, the distance displayed is in the units you have set; before then, the distance is in pixels. You can display angles in two different formats, which are controlled by the popup menu beneath and to the left of the map area. If you select Compass, the map will measure angles clockwise with 0/360 (i.e., North) at the top of the page. Alternatively, you can set the angles to From Hz. and then the angle is measured clockwise positive from the right hand side. This latter setting is useful if, as is sometimes the case, the cross sections are in a different scan/ sheet from the map. You can then measure dips and thicknesses on the cross sections to compare to those that you calculate from the the map. Clicking on an entered point in the map area selects the corresponding datum in the listbox in the lower right. If your map depicts an area in the United States or southernmost Canada, has been georeferenced, and you are connected to the Internet, option-clicking in the map will display the elevation at the point clicked. Data Tabs The right hand side of the main window contains the interface for entering or recording. By clicking on the tabs at the top of the Data Entry area, you can see the interfaces for each of the four modes of operation. While you can type numbers into all of these boxes, the program is designed to ease this task by capturing mouse clicks in the map area of the main window. The question is, how to associate a mouse click with the correct box? This is where all of those Click buttons to the left of each row of text boxes come in. The basic work ow is that, after clicking one of those buttons, the next mouse click the you make in the map area will record the horizontal, X-Y coordinates of the point clicked in the text boxes to the right of the click button. The elevation box will automatically be selected so that you can type in the elevation by reading the contours where you clicked. This workow can be signicantly speeded up by using the popup menu programed into the Map area of the window. Right click on a point and hold down the Shift Key on the Keyboard while selecting one of the points from the popup menu and the coordinates will automatically be recorded in the text boxes for that point and the elevation box selected. If you dont hold down the shift key, you will have to click the exact point again to record the X-Y coordinates. Finally, you can also initiate the mouse click to capture the position of a particular point with a menu command. For example, to capture point 2 on surface one, select Settings>Surface 1 Pt 2 or (much) easier still, use the key command !2.

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When you click on a recorded datum in the listbox in the lower right corner, the corresponding points are selected in the map portion of the window. The Overview Window Because GMDE displays maps at full resolution in the main window, it can be difcult to locate yourself on the overall scanned map area. To see where you are, select Windows>Overview (!L) which will display a oating window containing a reduced view of the entire map area as shown below:

The red square in the overview window shows the part that is displayed in the main window. You can drag the red square around the Overview Window to scroll the main window, or just click in the Overview Window to jump to that spot in the main window. The Overview Window can be resized for a higher resolution view, but it always shows the entire scan. Because the Overview Window is a oating window that is always on top, you can leave it open which you manipulate the main window.

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Datum Details Window

Once you have recored your data so that it shows up in the listbox in the lower right corner of the main window, you may wish to edit or explore the recorded datum in more detail. Selecting a datum in the listbox will select all of the points associated with that datum in the map view. To show the Datum Details oating window, select Window>Datum Details (!"D). All of the information about the datum (including the latitude and longitude if you have georeferenced the map) will be displayed. You can change all of the elds except for the thickness elds. As you change the elds, the thickness and error, as well as the strike and dip and their errors if you have selected 3 pt. check box, will change automatically in response to your changes. If you want to make these changes permanent, click the Record changes button.

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If the map has be georeferenced, the Datum Details window can also plot the points and the strike and dip associated with the selected datum on a Google satellite, road, or terrain map/image as shown above. Do not expect there to be a perfect match between the location of the points topo base of the geologic map and the Google image. The map may very well use a different datum and projection than the Google image, the source of the topography is undoubtedly different, and there are small errors (up to tens of feet or meters) that arise from the simple linear extrapolation used by GMDE to georeference the geologic map in the rst place. You can minimize any mismatch by specifying a coordinate system offset. The Inspector Window This Inspector palette or window allows you to specify or adjust some of the graphical features of the program. These setting in the Inspector apply only to the frontmost map and different maps can have different setting. The active points are those that correspond to the most recently measured/entered datum (i.e., the points still showing in the text boxes in the upper right of the main window), whereas inactive points correspond to older measurements that have already been recorded. Note that, as explained below, there can be multiple digitized contacts and multiple topographic proles; the settings only apply to the named contact or prole showing in the drop down menus.

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Preparing the Map

Reading in the Map and Setting the Scale The rst step in using the program is to open a picture of a geologic map. GMDE can read maps that have been saved as .jpg, jp2, .png, .tif, or .pdf; all of these le types will be accessible when you choose File>Open Map. The vertical edge of the image is assumed to be parallel to a N-S line. Once you have read in the map, you will need to set the scale. Navigate to the part of the map which has a scale bar and then choose Settings>Set Scale.

The Set Scale Dialog will appear, waiting for you to click the mouse and drag it along the scale bar. You should choose the scale bar in the same system of units that the topographic contours are in. In the above map, the contour units are in feet, so we have dragged the mouse along the miles horizontal scale bar. The popup menu allows you to set the units to Feet, Miles, Meters, or Kilometers. Internally, the program does all its calculations and displays results in either feet or meters; it is smart enough to know that 2 miles are equivalent to 10,560 ft. Once you press okay, all subsequent measurements will be either in feet or meters. There is no reason why you have to use a horizontal scale bar. If, for example, you have opened a scan of cross sections, you can just as easily drag along a vertical scale bar. If no scale bar is available, simply drag the mouse between any two points of known distance in the map.

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Georeferencing the Map

Setting the Corner Points

After you set the scale, you can georeference the map by clicking on the four corners of the map and entering their values in longitude and latitude (in decimal degrees only). This operation assumes that the edges of the map are dened by parallel lines of longitude and latitude. To initiate this operation, choose Settings>Georeference. You click on the four corners of the the map in a clockwise direction, starting in the upper left corner. As you click corners, new text boxes will appear for you to enter subsequent points. For example, in the above gure, the user has clicked on the upper right corner and entered both latitude and longitude. The most recent clicked corner was the upper right. The program automatically carries over the latitude value from the previous corner and has selected the longitude text box so that the user can enter the longitude on the right hand side of the map. After typing in that value, the user will click the lower right corner of the map (indicated by the red dot). Once the user does that, the program will automatically enter the longitude and select the text box so that the user can enter the latitude of that corner. Once the user clicks the third corner, the text boxes for the fourth corner will appear. Note that, for all points except for the rst corner, you will have to click twice, the rst time to make the geologic map window active and then click a second time to actually set the point. You will know that you have clicked a correct number of times when the new text boxes appear and the appropriate text box for the corner just clicked is selected. The georeferencing is quick and dirty like it says in the title bar of the oating window. GMDE simply linearly extrapolates the geographic position for points inside the map; the program does not use any map projections, etc. Nonetheless, the calculation is reasonably accurate for maps of scales 1:50,000 and larger. Once a map has been georeferenced the position of the cursor inside the map is shown in longitude and latitude in the text box in the bottom left corner of the map.
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Specifying a Coordinate System Offset

Georeferencing does not know anything about map datums or projections. Thus it is quite possible that the map you are extracting data from will have a different datum and projection than the WGS84 datum used by the Google satellite views (in the Datum Details Window) and the USGS elevation server. This can cause a difference in position of up to a hundred meters i.e., the point on the map will not be in the same place as the point on the image, and clicked points will not show the same elevation as the topographic contours on the map. You can specify an offset to correct (approximately) for the difference using Settings>Set Coordinate System O#set, which will give you the

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dialog box at the right. These offsets are applied uniformly across the entire map. There are several ways that you can determine these offsets. A simple way is to nd a well established point on the map (e.g., a peak or road intersection) and compare it to the same point in Google satellite view in the Datum Details Window. By trial and error set additional points as needed until you have the original point on the map and another point which is located on the same feature in the satellite view. Then, determine the X and Y distances between the two points. The offsets are the map coordinates minus the satellite coordinates. This procedure is illustrated in the image on the previous page. You can clearly see the road intersection but on the map, point 1 is on the intersection whereas on the satellite image, point 4 is on the intersection. The distance between these two points is the offset due to the fact that the map does not use the WGS84 datum. In the Set Coordinate System Offset dialog box (at the top of the image), the point on the map is 225 ft east and 33 ft north of the same point on the satellite image. GMDE will automatically save a text le in the same folder/directory as the map itself with the georeferencing, scale and offset information. When you open the map again, the program will look for that le and set the parameters automatically, so you only have to georeference and set scale once (unless you change the name of the map or the text le).

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Using the Different Modes

Strike, Dip, Thickness The rst stratigraphic surface which can be either the top or the base of the unit of interest is the one on which you dene the orientation of the beds, which will be used in the thickness calculation. The orientation can be dened either by calculating a 3 point problem or by using strike and dip symbols on the map.
3-Pt Problem

The mathematics of how we solve the 3-pt problem is given in Appendix 1 and is from Allmendinger & Judge (2013); here we merely describe the operation of the program. First select a bedding contact which appears to have constant strike and dip within the region dened by the three points. Classically, this would be where a contact crosses a valley or goes over a ridge, not close to any fold hinges. This same calculation, however, can be carried out for three drill holes, etc. Each of the three points can be on a different elevation contour, or two out of the three points can be on the same contour. To dene each point press the Click button next to the row for the three coordinates of the point, then click the point you want to use on the map. As soon as you click the point, the Up text box in the corresponding row will be selected, ready for you to type in the elevation of that point, which you will usually get by reading the contours on the map. Repeat the same procedure for the next two points. If you have a large computer monitor, the process just described can result in a lot of long distance mousing around over the screen, so there is a short cut: right-click (or control-click for Macs with a single button mouse) on the point you want to use. A contextual menu will pop up, listing points 1 to 4 (as well as set scale, etc.). Hold down the Shift Key on the keyboard while you choose one of the rst three points. When you release the mouse, the horizontal coordinates will be entered in the corresponding row and the Up text box will be selected, ready for you to type in the elevation. After clicking the third point, the strike and dip will be displayed automatically and a red strike and dip symbol will be plotted on the map in the middle of the triangle formed by the three points. The three radio buttons between the row of text boxes and the Click buttons determine which of the three points will be used in the thickness calculation. Because you are using a three point problem, all three will give you the same thickness as discussed below.
Manual Entry of Strike and Dip

To enter the strike and dip yourself rather than use a 3-pt problem, check the override 3 pt. calculation check box:

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Using either the contextual menu, the Click button next to the strike and dip row, select Drag strike line and then click on the middle of the strike line and drag along it to set the strike. Alternatively, if you use the key command !D (the key command for Operations>Drag Strike Line), the program will automatically set the override checkmark and will await your click and drag in the window. It will be more accurate if you drag a ling that extends well beyond the ends of the strike line. The position of the observation is set by where you rst click the mouse to start the drag so you will want to click and hold down at the intersection of the strike line and the dip tick mark. Dragging is symmetrical so that the line extends outward equally on both sides of the original click. After dragging along the strike line, the value will be automatically entered in the strike text box and the dip text box will be selected ready for you to type in the dip value. By default, GMDE assumes that the strike and dip are given using a right hand rule format (the dip is to the right of the given strike azimuth). The popup menu, initially labeled RHR will allow you to specify a dip quadrant in case you did not drag in the direction of the right hand rule strike. If you do specify a different quadrant, the strike value will automatically be replaced by the right hand rule strike and the popup menu will be set to RHR.
Determining Stratigraphic Thickness

Once the orientation of the bed is set by one of the two methods, above, you then select a single point along a different stratigraphic contact; usually, this will be the top of the formation (if you did the 3-pt problem on the base) or the base of the formation (if the three point problem was done on the top), but you may want to include several formations in the thickness calculation. As described in Appendix 1, the thickness calculation that GMDE performs does not require that this point on surface 2 be up or down

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true dip from the points on surface 1; for perfectly parallel beds, any point on surface 2 can be used. You set the point on surface 2 the same way you set the points on surface 1: with the click button or using the contextual menu. If you use the latter, you should select Click Pt. 4 from the menu. The program will enter the horizontal coordinates of the point automatically and select the up text box for you to type in the elevation of the point. The thickness will then be calculated and shown in small text below the coordinates of the point on surface 2. If you want to record this point in the listbox in the lower right corner of the window and the table of values that the program maintains internally (and can be saved to disk), press the Record thickness button or press Return on the keyboard. This listbox has an editable Notes eld which you can enter info in by double clicking in that eld. The notes eld looks tiny, but the listbox scrolls horizontally to show more of it when selected (and can be seen in its entirety in the Datum Details window):

The calculated thickness uses the point from surface 2 and the point from surface 1 that has the selected radio button next to it. For the 3-pt problem any of the three points on surface 1 will give exactly the same thickness, however, if you have chosen to override the 3 pt problem and enter the strike and dip manually from the map, then it is likely that each point on surface 1 will give a different answer. The screen shot below shows four different determinations of thickness of the purple bed, the rst using the 3 pt problem and the nal three using the strike and dip symbol on the map and each of the three points on surface 1. The thicknesses range from 728 114 ft to 440 77 ft!

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Which is correct? We dont know, so the range of values is a representation of the uncertainty in the map thickness of the purple bed. This is precisely why we wrote this program was to get rm statistics on this uncertainty. It may surprise you it certainly surprised us that the range is so broad! It is likely that you will do many orientation and thickness measurements on a single map. GMDE keeps track of the points you have selected. Inactive points are plotted in blue, whereas active points that are being used in the current calculation are plotted in red. You can change these colors in the Inspector palette.
Set Errors

GMDE can calculate the uncertainty on a single strike, dip, and thickness determination if you specify the errors in the Set Errors panel. These errors should be specied in the same units that are used in the rest of the program. The horizontal errors refer to the uncertainty in the location of a point on the map, whereas vertical refers to the uncertainty in elevation. The horizontal errors are shown graphically by a circle around the point which has a radius equal to the horizontal error:

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What are the appropriate errors to use for horizontal and vertical? For the horizontal, you can get some idea simply by looking at the error circles drawn on the map (as above) and asking yourself whether you know the position to that level of accuracy. For the vertical errors, you are probably safe assuming an error equal to ! a contour interval (in the above map, the contour interval is 40 feet so I used 20 feet for the uncertainty). Note that horizontal errors propagate to have a much bigger effect than the vertical errors. In the above map, using the exact same points, a 50 ft horizontal and 20 ft vertical error yield 2.6 of uncertainty in the strike, 7.9 for the dip, and 103.7 ft for the thickness. Increasing the horizontal error to 100 ft just about doubles the errors on the dip and the thickness. The mathematics of the error propagation are described in Appendix 1. The same horizontal and vertical errors are used for all four points in a single strike-dip-thickness determination. If you choose to override the three point calculation and enter the strike and dip manually, the program will let you specify the strike and dip errors manually (these elds are blocked when the three point calculation is in effect). Note that you still should enter horizontal and vertical errors as they are used in the thickness calculation. Many geologists assume, arbitrarily, that a strike and dip measurement with the compass is good to 5. The philosophical implications regarding the accuracy of compass measurements are beyond these notes accurate at the scale of the compass? Representative of the entire outcrop? Accurate for determination of thickness of a section hundreds of feet thick? These are questions that only the geologist who has been on the

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ground in the area can hope to answer, and even then only with a great deal more work to determine reproducibility of measurements than is commonly carried out in the eld! If you use a three point problem to calculate strike and dip, then the thickness determined between any of those points and the fourth point on the opposite boundary of the bed will be the same. The error in thickness will not be constant, however! The smallest error will be given by the point which is most nearly in the true dip direction from the fourth point on the opposite boundary of the bed.
Statistical Analysis

I expect that you will do most of the statistical analysis of your data in a fulledged program designed for this purpose. GMDE can, however, provide an on-the-y snapshot of your data by selecting Analyze>Statistics. This will provide you with a quick summary as shown below:

Strike and dip only You may just want to use GMDE to extract strikes and dips from an existing geologic map and dont care about stratigraphic thicknesses. If so, just select the Strike & dip only mode in Settings>Mode>Strike & Dip Only. Then, for each strike and dip you want to capture, type !D, click at each intersection of the strike line and dip tick mark, and drag parallel to the strike line (preferably, for efciencys sake, in the direction so that the dip direction is to the right of the given strike azimuth). Once you release the mouse, the strike will be entered in the appropriate box and the dip text box will be se-

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lected for you to type in the dip value. The location of the strike and dip observation will be recorded in the text boxes for point 1, surface 1. After entering the dip, if you hit the tab key, you will be transferred directly to the Up text box to enter the elevation (by reading it off of the contours), if you are not using the elevation server. Note that you can also collect strikes and dips by three point problems. In this case, make sure that the override 3 pt. Calculation checkbox remains unchecked. In this case, GMDE will record the location of the strike and dip in the middle of the three points used to calculate the orientation. Strikes and dips recorded this way can be exported as a text le with tab separated columns, which can be read into Stereonet or any spreadsheet program. Stratigraphic thicknesses are not calculated when Strike & Dip only mode is turned on. Digitize Contacts

The raster maps of the USGS and the GSC are nice but, if you want to do any calculations, you need digitized contacts. Although digitization in 2D plan view is relatively straightforward, if you want to do something like a digital down-plunge projection (Allmendinger et al., 2012) then you need to include elevation, which is much more tedious to come by. For maps in the United States and southern Canada that have been

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georeferenced, GMDE takes care of this by getting the elevations automatically from the USGS elevation server. Every time you click on a point while digitizing a contact, GMDE will convert your click to both longitude and latitude (as well as UTM coordinates) and then use those coordinates to request the elevation of that point from the server. Once the mode is set in the settings menu, choose Operations>Draw New Contact. All subsequent clicks in the map will be interpreted as clicks along a contact. To nish entering a contact, just double click. You will then be prompted to name the contact. All contacts and their coordinates are displayed in the the Digitize Contacts tab on the right side of the main window; internally, the program also calculate the UTM coordinates of each vertex. To digitize another contact, just choose Operations>Draw New Contact again and click away! The 3D vertices for the selected contact in the listbox at the top are displayed in the listbox at the bottom of that tab. GMDE also calculates the length of the contact, the area enclosed by the contact, and the maximum and minimum elevations (in the currently selected units). When you select a contact, the line in the map pane is highlighted with a series of small boxes positioned at each vertex (in the screen capture, above, the Js top contact is selected). You can edit the contact simply by clicking and dragging on one of the boxes of the selected vertices; once you release the mouse, the new latitude, longitude and elevation will be displayed for the edited point. Contacts can be assigned different colors and weights via the Inspector. If you export the contact as .kml, those colors and weights are maintained in Google Earth. Of course, you can use digitize contacts for whatever you want: measuring the area of a property, the length along a transect, etc. Contacts can be hidden by unchecking the checkbox next to their name in the listbox at the top of the Digitize Contacts tab. Topographic Prole A tedious task to do by hand is to construct a The Topographic Prole mode is topographic prole at no vertical exaggeration for really only useful at present if you constructing a geologic cross section. There are sev- are connected to the Internet and are eral programs that can construct a topographic pro- working on a map in the United le, but you still have to mark the contacts on it. States or southernmost Canada! GMDE simplies this process by allowing you to click along a line of section just on the contacts of interest. To start, select Operations>Dene Topo Prole. At each click, the listbox at the bottom of the Prole Tab of the data entry area is highlighted for you to enter an annotation about the contact. Topo proles do not have to be straight line but can be polygons of any complexity. Once you double click to terminate the prole, the program will resample the polygon calculate the distances along the line of section and go to the USGS elevation server to get the
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elevations of all of the points in the resampled polygon. A resampled line of section in a standard USGS 7.5 minute quadrangle will have 300 to 400 vertices and thus it will take time to retrieve all of those elevations from the server. This process occurs in a separate thread so you can do other things with the program. A progress bar shows how far along the program is in retrieving the elevations; this process can take anywhere from several seconds to minutes depending on the length of the prole to the speed of your Internet connection. Once the prole has been resampled, you can plot it by choosing Window>Topo Prole. This shows a new window with the complete prole, vertical scale and annotations. By resizing the window, you change the overall scale of the topographic prole but it will always have no vertical or horizontal exaggeration. As described below, the prole can be saved as an .svg le, which can be imported and edited by most modern vector graphics programs.

Saving/Exporting your results

The rows in any of the list boxes in the tabs on the right hand side of the main window that shows the record of thicknesses and orientations can be selected and copied (multiple and non-contiguous selections are permitted). The text on the clipboard is tab delimited so you can easily copy this text and then paste it into a spreadsheet and

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the strike, dip, and thickness (or distance, elevation, etc. will each be placed in a different column. GMDE can save to disk three types of les: Text les of data, .KML les for reading into Google Earth, and . SVG graphics les for visualization in drawing programs. All are accessed from the File Menu. As a general rule, any le that is saved from the File>Save Data> submenus can be read back into the program for further analysis; any le saved with an Export command cannot be re-opened by GMDE. Each is described, below. Text Files
Saving Data

Under the File>Save Data> menu are four possible choices. The rst two Thickness/Orientation Data (!S) and Selected Thick/Orient Data are used to save data from either Strike Dip Thickness or Strike & Dip Only modes. The only difference between the two save command is that the second, as the name implies, saves only the selected data. The other two commands in that submenu Digitized Contacts (!"S) and Topo Prole save data output from the modes of the same name. All four types of les saved from the File>Save Data> submenu contain header information that allows them to be read back into the program. Part of that header information is the name of the map le; if you change the name of the map, you will not be able to read in the data again without also editing the name of the map in the data le. All of these les are tab-separated columns of data and all of the columns have headers, so you can easily open them in a spreadsheet program for further analysis.
Exporting Data

You can also export a table of tab separated columns of strike and dip information which can be read into a program like Stereonet or any spreadsheet program. (File>Export Strikes & Dips) for reading into other programs such as Stereonet. If the map has been georeferenced, latitude and longitude will also be exported for visualization in other programs. The gure below shows the Parse text le function of Stereonet being used to read strikes and dips exported from GMDE:

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Recalculating saved results with different errors or scale

You can recalculate certain aspects of a le of strikes, dips, and thicknesses that has already been saved to disk by choosing Edit>Recalculate Saved Analysis. This facility allows you to change errors without having to remeasure every single point. You will be prompted to open a le of analyses, and once you do so, the following dialog appears:

Check the box next to the parameter that you want to change and enter a new value. Once you press Save to new File you will be prompted to provide a new name for the
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le. Thought the program will allow you to overwrite the old le (if you choose the same name and location on the disk), this is not recommended! The strike and dip errors are only used for points where the strike and dip was entered manually, not by three point problem. Note that, although it is possible to collect a data set where you change the horizontal and vertical errors for each set of four points, if you change them in this dialog box, all points will have the same error applied to them, so be careful! Be especially careful about changing the map scale (which is calculated as the number of map units per pixel; in the above case, the map scale is 13.91907 feet per pixel). This value only applied to the horizontal positions of the points, not the vertical position. If changed, all of your strikes and dips will also change. Only the values that have a checkmark will be used in a recalculation. Exporting .KML Files GMDE can export both strikes & dips and digitized contacts as .kml les for visualization in Google Earth. Strikes and dips are output using Tom Blenkinsops (2012) great 3D symbols. Exported digitized contacts maintain their color and line width in Google Earth. Below you can see a down-plunge view of a fold with strikes and dips.

This is a great way to virtually eld check maps by yourself and others.

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Exporting Topo Proles as .SVG Files The whole reason for producing a topographic prole with annotated contacts is so the one can draw a cross section. Thus, you will want a way to import les into your favorite graphics program. GMDE uses the scalable vector graphics (.svg) format to save your topo prole. This is an open xml-based format that all modern graphics programs can read. It will preserve all of the detail of the original polygon in GMDE and can be edited as a vector object in your drawing program of choice. Below is the vector version of the screen capture on page 23. The difference in quality is particularly noticeable when you zoom in.
anticline axis Js top Jp top

8600 8400

Kp top

Ke top

8200

Jp top

Kb top

8000 7800 7600 7400 7200 7000 6800 6600 6400 6200 6000 5800 5600 5400 5200 5000

Js top

Ke top

thrust

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Kp top

Appendix 1 Algorithms for Orientation and Thickness Calculations

Three point problem There are many ways to do the three point problem which are well described in structural geology lab manuals. GMDE treats the three points as position vectors. The vectors in the stratigraphic plane of interest are then v = P2-P1 and u = P3-P1. The cross product of any two vectors within the plane give the pole to the plane and from the pole, one can easily calculate the strike and dip of the plane (see Allmendinger et al., 2012):

X3 = U

p2

v=

p2

X2 = N

! p1
postion vectors

u = p3 p1
p3

pole = v ! u

X1 = E

1. Subtract position vectors:

We use an East-North-Up coordinate system so the subscripts below indicate 1=E, 2=N, and 3=U.

v=" $ ( P 21 ! P11 ) # u=" ( P 31 ! P11 ) $ #

( P 2 2 ! P12 ) ( P 2 3 ! P13 ) ( P 32 ! P12 ) ( P 33 ! P13 )

% ' & % ' &

To convert these to lower hemisphere, set the 1 component = N, 2 = E, and 3 = D = U. Assuming we know the uncertainty on the horizontal and vertical positions of the three points, we can propagate the errors. In GeolMapDataExtractor, we just use one value for all horizontal uncertainties (hze) and one for the vertical uncertainties (vte), though it
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would be possible to specify different horizontal and vertical errors for each point. Here and in the rest of this derivation, we use standard error propagation for Gaussian errors (Allmendinger et al., 2012; Taylor, 1997) and use ! to indicate error in a particular component.
2 2

# " P 21 & # " P11 & 2 2 ! v1 = % ! P 21 ( + % ! P11 ( = ! P 21 + ! P11 $ "v1 ' $ "v1 '

# "P22 & # " P12 & 2 ! v2 = % ! P22 ( + % ! P12 ( = ! P 2 2 2 + ! P12 $ "v2 ' $ "v2 '

# "P2 3 & # " P13 & 2 ! v3 = % ! P23 ( + % ! P13 ( = ! P 2 2 3 + ! P13 $ " v3 ' $ " v3 '

Similarly, propagating the errors for u, we get:

2 2

# " P 31 & # " P11 & 2 2 ! u1 = % ! P 31 ( + % ! P11 ( = ! P 31 + ! P11 $ "u1 ' $ "u1 '

# " P 32 & # " P12 & 2 ! u2 = % ! P 32 ( + % ! P12 ( = ! P 32 2 + ! P12 $ "u 2 ' $ "u 2 '

# " P 33 & # " P13 & 2 ! u3 = % ! P 33 ( + % ! P13 ( = ! P 32 3 + ! P13 $ "u 3 ' $ "u 3 '

2. Take the cross-product

v!u= # (v u " v u ) % $ 2 3 3 2

( v3u1 " v1u3 ) ( v1u2 " v2u1 )

&=# s ( ' $ 1

s2

s3 & '

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Again, propagating the errors:

! s1 =

(u3! v2 )2 + ( "u2! v3 )2 + ( v2! u3 )2 + ( " v3! u2 )2 (u1! v3 )2 + ( "u3! v1 )2 + ( v3! u1 )2 + ( " v1! u3 )2 (u2! v1 )2 + ( "u1! v2 )2 + ( v1! u2 )2 + ( " v2! u1 )2

! s2 =

! s3 =

3. Make the cross-product a unit vector

The cross product gives us the pole to the plane but we need to convert it to a unit vector before it can be transformed back into geographic orientations like trend and plunge or strike and dip. We start by calculating the magnitude of cross product, s, and propagating the errors:
2 2 smagn = s12 + s2 + s3

! smagn

" s % " s % " s % = $ 1 ! s1 ' + $ 2 ! s2 ' + $ 3 ! s3 ' # smagn & # smagn & # smagn &

, by dividing each component of s by its And now we calculate the unit pole vector, p
magnitude, smagn.

= ! p1 p "

p2

! s1 p3 # = % $ % smagn "

s2 smagn

s3 smagn

# & & $

And again propagating the errors:

2 2

" 1 % " (s % ! p1 = $ ! s1 ' + $ 2 1 ! smagn ' # smagn & # smagn &

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" 1 % " (s % ! p2 = $ ! s2 ' + $ 2 2 ! smagn ' # smagn & # smagn &

" 1 % " (s % ! p3 = $ ! s3 ' + $ 2 3 ! smagn ' # smagn & # smagn &

4. Convert back to geographic coordinates

The dip is straightforward because it is just the arccosine of the p3 component of the pole to the plane:

dip = cos !1 ( p3 )
And the uncertainty on the dip:

! dip

# = %" % $

& 1 ! p3 ( = 2 ( " p3 + 1) ( '

(" p

! p3
2 3

+ 1)

The strike is a function of p2 and p1:

"p % strike = tan !1 $ 2 ' # p1 &

or

"p % strike = 180 + tan !1 $ 2 ' # p1 &

And nally, the error on the strike:

2 2

" p % " % p ! strike = $ 2 1 2 ! p2 ' + $ ( 2 2 2 ! p1 ' # p2 + p1 & # p2 + p1 &

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Thickness Calculation In most structural geology textbooks, specialized formulas are given for cases where (a) the topographic slope and the bed are inclined in the same direction, but bedding is steeper, (b) topography and slope are inclined in the same direction but the slope is steeper, or (c) topography and slope are inclined in opposite directions. All three special cases require that the point on the top of the bed is located either exactly up or down the true dip direction from the point on the base of the bed. GMDE uses a completely different approach which avoids the ambiguities of these specialized cases and allows the points to be anywhere on the base and top of the bed. Like the specialized cases, GMDE does assume that the top and base of the bed are parallel (i.e., have the same strike and dip). GMDE uses an East-North-Up (E=X1, N=X2, U=X3) coordinate system, where up is the elevation above sea level, and East and North are the distances, in feet or meters, from the lower left hand corner of the Map scan. To calculate stratigraphic thickness, we perform a coordinate transformation into a bedding coordinate system where, X"1 = strike, X"2 = dip, and X"3 = the pole to the bed. In this new coordinate system, the X"3 coordinate of a point anywhere on the top of the bed is always the same distance from the X"3 coordinate of a point anywhere on the base of the bed. Because X"3 axis is the pole to the bed, that distance is the stratigraphic thickness. This method avoids special cases of which way the topography dips and does not require that the point on the base be up or down the true dip from the point on the top of the bed.

X3 = Up

X2 = N

X!1 = strike

X!3 = pole

X!2 = true dip

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ba
X1 = E

se

to p

The transformation matrix that allows us to convert from one coordinate system to the other is:

" sin( strike) cos( strike) 0 $ aij = $ cos( strike)cos(dip ) ! sin( strike)cos(dip ) ! sin(dip ) $ # ! cos( strike)sin(dip ) sin( strike)sin(dip ) ! cos(dip )

% ' ' ' &

Where strike and dip are in right hand rule format. One then applies the standard coordinate transformation (Allmendinger et al., 2012) and takes the absolute value of the difference in X"3 coordinates of the point on the top and base of the bed to get the thickness.
1. Transformation to the bedding reference frame

If x1, x2, and x3 are the coordinates of a point in geographic reference frame, then its coordinates in the bedding reference frame are:
! = a11 x1 + a12 x2 + a13 x3 = ( sin ( strike)) x1 + ( cos ( strike)) x2 x1 ! = a21 x1 + a22 x2 + a23 x3 = ( cos ( strike) cos ( dip )) x1 + ( " sin ( strike) cos ( dip )) x2 + ( " sin ( dip )) x3 x2 ! = a31 x1 + a32 x2 + a33 x3 = ( " cos ( strike) sin ( dip )) x1 + ( sin ( strike) sin ( dip )) x2 + ( " cos ( dip )) x3 x3

Because it is the stratigraphically up direction that we are interested in, we really only need the third equation, above. The errors on a31, a32, and a33 are:

! a31 =

(sin ( strike) sin ( dip )! strike) + ( " cos ( strike) cos ( dip )! dip )
2

! a32 =

( cos ( strike) sin ( dip )! strike) + (sin ( strike) cos ( dip )! dip )
2

! a33 =

(sin ( dip )! dip )

From this, we can calculate the error on the stratigraphically up component in the bedding reference frame:

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"= ! x3

( x1! a31 )2 + ( a31! x1 )2 + ( x2! a32 )2 + ( a32! x2 )2 + ( x3! a33 )2 + ( a33! x3 )2

The thickness of the bed is just the difference between the x3" of the top of the bed and that for the base of the bed:

thickness =

top

! " base x3 ! x3

And the nal error on the thickness is:

! thickness =

top

" + # base! x3 " ! x3

) (
2

Reference Allmendinger, R. W., Cardozo, N., Fisher, D. L., 2012, Structural Geology Algorithms: Vectors and Tensors in Structural Geology: Cambridge University Press. Allmendinger, R. W., and Judge, P. A., 2013, Stratigraphic thickness uncertainty and errors in shortening from balanced sections in the North American Cordillera: Geological Society of America Bulletin, p. 11, doi: 10.1130/B30871.1 Blenkinsop, T.G., 2012. Visualizing structural geology: From Excel to Google Earth. Computers & Geosciences v. 45, p. 5256. Taylor, J. R., 1997, An introduction to error analysis: The study of uncertainties in physical measurements: Sausalito, California, University Science Books, 327 pp.

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Appendix 2 Geologic Map Sources on the Web

Raster maps on the web usually are not geocoded, but GMDE would not use that information, anyway. If you access maps in shape le format (.shp), you will have to save them as .jpg, .jp2, .png, .tif, or .pdf. USGS Geologic map server: # http://maps.ngmdb.us/dataviewer/

The USGS site has a huge number of geologic maps and a very nice web portal viewer for nding maps in any part of the country. The geologic maps can be downloaded in a highly compressed proprietary format called MrSID (.sid), which is proprietary to LizardTech. There is a free Windows viewer for these les called ExpressView, but no similar program currently exists for Macintosh computers. They can, however, be opened by GraphicConverter in 32 bit mode or if you run Windows in a virtual machine on the Mac you can open them in ExpressView and save them as JPEG les for importing into GMDE. A more modern interface with more download options is at: # http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/maps/MapView/
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This newer site allows downloads in PDF and GeoTiff formats which are much more convenient than the MrSID les. The images are also geocoded, though GMDE does not use that information. Geological Survey of Canada Map Server: # http://apps1.gdr.nrcan.gc.ca/mirage/mirage_index_e.php

High resolution raster images of geologic maps from the GSC can be downloaded as MrSID (.sid), JPEG2000 (.jp2), or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf). GMDE can read JPEG2000 les directly so that is the best to use. Though GMDE can also read .pdf les, those are both larger and lower resolution than .jp2 les. USGS Elevation_Service The server that GMDE uses to get elevations can be accessed at: # http://gisdata.usgs.net/xmlwebservices2/elevation_service.asmx

There isnt much to see here (unless you are a programmer), but they do have a rudimentary interface for entering longitude and latitude and getting your own elevations:
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# For what it is worth, GMDE uses a separate SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) request to get each and every elevation, which is why it takes a while to make a topographic prole!

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