Article

Tools of the Geology Trade and Their Origin

Authors:
Dan Merriam
Dan Merriam
Dan Merriam
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Walter Youngquist
Walter Youngquist
Walter Youngquist
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Abstract

Tools of the trade help a geologist in the field to measure, describe, and record data about rocks and their position and spatial relationships. We explore some of the trademark tools of a geologist and the origin of each tool.

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... Another situation when a tape measure is not very effective is the case of a significant interval (e.g., metres to tens of meters) without clear surfaces indicating the structural dip (e.g., a very thick unit without internal bedding or with disrupted bedding or a covered interval). In these scenarios stratigraphic thickness measurements must be carried out by sighting, for which the most effective tool is a Jacob's staff (see Merriam and Youngquist (2012) for an historical perspective and for a discussion on the origin of the name). In its simplest version a Jacob's staff for logging purposes is a vertical rod of known height with a device to help sighting mounted on its top (e.g., a sight or a flat disc). ...
A high-precision Jacob's staff with improved spatial accuracy and laser sighting capability
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2016
  • SEDIMENT GEOL
A new Jacob's staff design incorporating a 3D positioning stage and a laser sighting stage is described. The first combines a compass and a circular spirit level on a movable bracket and the second introduces a laser able to slide vertically and rotate on a plane parallel to bedding. The new design allows greater precision in stratigraphic thickness measurement while restricting the cost and maintaining speed of measurement to levels similar to those of a traditional Jacob's staff. Greater precision is achieved as a result of: a) improved 3D positioning of the rod through the use of the integrated compass and spirit level holder; b) more accurate sighting of geological surfaces by tracing with height adjustable rotatable laser; c) reduced error when shifting the trace of the log laterally (i.e. away from the dip direction) within the trace of the laser plane, and d) improved measurement of bedding dip and direction necessary to orientate the Jacob's staff, using the rotatable laser. The new laser holder design can also be used to verify parallelism of a geological surface with structural dip by creating a visual planar datum in the field and thus allowing determination of surfaces which cut the bedding at an angle (e.g., clinoforms, levees, erosion surfaces, amalgamation surfaces, etc.). Stratigraphic thickness measurements and estimates of measurement uncertainty are valuable to many applications of sedimentology and stratigraphy at different scales (e.g., bed statistics, reconstruction of palaeotopographies, depositional processes at bed scale, architectural element analysis), especially when a quantitative approach is applied to the analysis of the data; the ability to collect larger data sets with improved precision will increase the quality of such studies.
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Kansas from Space: A Century of Viewing the Earth from Above
Article
  • Apr 2011
The Earth has been viewed and photographed from above for more than a century utilizing a variety of platforms such as kites, balloons, airplanes, and now robotic and manned spacecraft. Imagery has been captured both by film and digital cameras from heights of a few hundred feet to hundreds of miles. This imagery has been used to construct topographic maps, identify man-made objects, and map surface features on Earth including the geology. Photographs taken at different altitudes have different resolution, aerial coverage, and levels of detail, and thus serve a number of different purposes. The quality and utility of Earth imagery has continuously improved during the last 100 years, including the photo-documentation of features in Kansas. Of special interest is the development of space-based photo-documentation including an extensive database of some 800,000 photographs maintained by NASA that have been taken by the astronauts since the beginning of human spaceflight. There are many high-quality photographs of Kansas most of which have been obtained from either Space Shuttle missions in high-inclination orbits or from the International Space Station. Images taken remotely over Kansas from different platforms at different heights for different purposes are shown as examples of how images from altitude can be used.
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