I just happened to stumble upon an update of a tool to Create Geologic Cross Sections, eXacto Section v. 2.0, that I mentioned in July. Jennifer Carrell at the Illinois Geological Survey wrote this tool. The latest update is from December 8, 2010 and can be downloaded at ESRI’s ArcGIS Resource Center. Our office has used previous versions and finds in very useful in creating cross-sections. I have not tried this latest update.

The Arizona Geological Survey has a great looking site with some good information. They have a publication list that can either be downloaded or ordered and are making pdf versions of their recent publications available online. I was going to note that there was no download-able data available until Google told me that they in fact had a WMS/WFS available online. The WMS is a great looking map, I have not gotten the WFS to work, however–probably more due to my abilities than the service.

The Michigan Office of Geological Survey appears to have pdf versions of all the documents in their Digital Geological Library available for download. The transcripts of some early (beginning in 1871) field notes are a fun inclusion in the available archives. Actual GIS data was a bit hard to find although I found both bedrock geology and quarternary geology available from the state Geographic Data Library in shapefile format. I also found oil and gas well data but did not download it.

The Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey has a well organized, appealing website. Their data is easy to find although there is not much GIS data available. Although because I am more interested in sample data sets than anything, the GIS data they do have–statewide geologic map; pleistocene geology, precambrian geology, quaternary geology, (surficial?) geology and bedrock geology for various counties–may actually be a great reference. Other than the statewide geologic map, the data is available on a per-publication basis.

The Iowa Geological Surveyhas a lot of data available to download here. PDF versions of many of their publications can be found in their List of Publications. Their GIS data is minimally attributed for the most part, their public wells data set did have a more robust attribution scheme. One cool feature I found in the wells data is that they provide a hyper-link for many features to an on-line site record.

In the last couple months, I’ve had a bit of an eye-opening about Geography. People actually trained in geography may implicitly understand this but I, with my Accounting degree, have spent the last 16 years ‘doing’ GIS without realizing the foundation of geography–geology. I picked up enough geography to understand some of the inter-relationships between people and the lands they live on. But what I didn’t pick up on was how the lands we live on are formed.