©     Geologic maps and how they are made


        The goal of a geologist is to let the rocks tell there story. To do this the geologist must go to the field and gather information and data. Data like what type of rock is found at a given specific points. The geologist must determine the age of the rock using fossils and other correlating data and the thickness of the rock formations. The geologist must determine how far spread the rock formation are and why was it deposited, were did the material that make up the rock formations come from. What type of environment was the rock formation deposited in. He must measure things like the strike and dip of the rock formations. His job is much like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. He must determine were each piece of data fits and how all the pieces of data are linked. To do this he builds or draws a geological map. His first step is to find a topographical map of the area he is interested in. This map must have all the present roads, bridges, streams, rivers, mountains and other present day landmarks on the map, a distance scale and an arrow showing what direction north is. The second step the geologist then carefully lays in all the information he has gathered on his field trips over the top of the topographical map. He draws in and labels all the rock formations and fault zones. He then colors in all the rock formations with a particular color depicting the age of each rock formation and label each with the strike and dip of each zone. Step 3 He then draws a map legend correlating all the data on the map with the data on the map legend.

STEP 1.




STEP 2.



STEP 3.