TY - JOUR

T1 - Using digital outcrops to make the high Arctic more accessible through the Svalbox database

AU - Senger, Kim

AU - Betlem, Peter

AU - Birchall, Thomas

AU - Buckley, Simon J.

AU - Coakley, Bernard

AU - Eide, Christian H.

AU - Flaig, Peter P.

AU - Forien, Melanie

AU - Galland, Olivier

AU - Gonzaga, Luiz

AU - Jensen, Maria

AU - Kurz, Tobias

AU - Lecomte, Isabelle

AU - Mair, Karen

AU - Malm, Rie Hjørnegaard

AU - Mulrooney, Mark

AU - Naumann, Nicole

AU - Nordmo, Ivar

AU - Nolde, Nils

AU - Ogata, Kei

AU - Rabbel, Ole

AU - Schaaf, Niklas W.

AU - Smyrak-Sikora, Aleksandra

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 National Association of Geoscience Teachers.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - The high Arctic is a remote place, where geoscientific research and teaching require expensive and logistically demanding expeditions to make use of the short field seasons. The absence of vegetation facilitates the use of modern photogrammetric techniques for the cost-effective generation of high-resolution digital outcrop models (DOMs). These georeferenced models can be used in pre-fieldwork activities to help prepare for traditional geological fieldwork, during fieldwork to record observations, and post-fieldwork to conduct quantitative geological analyses. Analyses of DOMs range in scale from mm-cm (e.g., size and spacing of dinosaur footprints), to hundreds of meters (e.g., seismic modeling of outcrops and outcrop-well-seismic correlations) and can advance research objectives. This integration is strengthened if key geoscientific data, like geological and topographical maps, subsurface profiles, borehole data, remote sensing data, geophysical data and DOMs can be integrated through a common database, such as the Svalbox database that we present in this commentary. Svalbox geographically targets the Svalbard archipelago, where fieldwork is challenging due to the harsh polar environment, risk of polar bear encounters and demanding transport to the field area. The University Centre in Svalbard nonetheless relies on utilizing the natural Svalbard environment for its field-based education, and now makes use of Svalbox to make geological fieldwork more efficient and post-fieldwork analyses more quantitative. Experience and usage of such tools in geoscientific education, particularly in the polar regions, is not well documented. Therefore, we share experiences on both developing and optimizing Svalbox, and on student and lecturer usage. Svalbox includes a web-based interface through which DOMs are shared and displayed together with relevant public-domain geoscientific data sets. Svalbox also serves as a platform to share student and teacher experiences on the entire DOM workflow, from acquisition to data distribution. For the Svalbox users questioned by the project group, DOMs were found to provide many benefits, including quantitative analyses, extended field season, appreciation of scale and data sharing that significantly outweigh present-day challenges, such as the need for expensive hardware and lack of easily accessible interpretation software, the latter being surmountable within the near-term.

AB - The high Arctic is a remote place, where geoscientific research and teaching require expensive and logistically demanding expeditions to make use of the short field seasons. The absence of vegetation facilitates the use of modern photogrammetric techniques for the cost-effective generation of high-resolution digital outcrop models (DOMs). These georeferenced models can be used in pre-fieldwork activities to help prepare for traditional geological fieldwork, during fieldwork to record observations, and post-fieldwork to conduct quantitative geological analyses. Analyses of DOMs range in scale from mm-cm (e.g., size and spacing of dinosaur footprints), to hundreds of meters (e.g., seismic modeling of outcrops and outcrop-well-seismic correlations) and can advance research objectives. This integration is strengthened if key geoscientific data, like geological and topographical maps, subsurface profiles, borehole data, remote sensing data, geophysical data and DOMs can be integrated through a common database, such as the Svalbox database that we present in this commentary. Svalbox geographically targets the Svalbard archipelago, where fieldwork is challenging due to the harsh polar environment, risk of polar bear encounters and demanding transport to the field area. The University Centre in Svalbard nonetheless relies on utilizing the natural Svalbard environment for its field-based education, and now makes use of Svalbox to make geological fieldwork more efficient and post-fieldwork analyses more quantitative. Experience and usage of such tools in geoscientific education, particularly in the polar regions, is not well documented. Therefore, we share experiences on both developing and optimizing Svalbox, and on student and lecturer usage. Svalbox includes a web-based interface through which DOMs are shared and displayed together with relevant public-domain geoscientific data sets. Svalbox also serves as a platform to share student and teacher experiences on the entire DOM workflow, from acquisition to data distribution. For the Svalbox users questioned by the project group, DOMs were found to provide many benefits, including quantitative analyses, extended field season, appreciation of scale and data sharing that significantly outweigh present-day challenges, such as the need for expensive hardware and lack of easily accessible interpretation software, the latter being surmountable within the near-term.

KW - digital geology

KW - Education

KW - geoscience

KW - interactive

KW - Spitsbergen

KW - Svalbard

U2 - 10.1080/10899995.2020.1813865

DO - 10.1080/10899995.2020.1813865

M3 - Journal article

VL - 69

SP - 123

EP - 137

JO - Journal of Geoscience Education

JF - Journal of Geoscience Education

SN - 1089-9995

IS - 2

ER -