I fell in love with geological illustrations when I was taking geology in college. Of all my copious and fast scribbled notes, the illustrations and diagrams I made received the most attention, probably too much. These aren’t my illustrations but they beautifully capture what I loved about trying to encompass and visualize vast, slow and transformative processes happening on a geologic time scale. I found these years ago on the West Virginia University Geology 101 class page.
Earthworks – An Immersive Geological Installation By Semiconductor
Earthworks is a five channel computer generated animation, which creates an immersive experience of the phenomena of landscape formation through the scientific and technological devices that are used to study it. Masses of colourful layers are animated by the sound-scapes of earthquake, volcanic, glacial and human activity, recorded as seismic waves, which form spectacular fluctuating marbled waveforms.
By using seismic data to control the masses of layers Semiconductor are not only playing with the idea that it is these forces that have shaped landscapes, but also that being an event that occurs beyond a human-time frame, landscape formation can only be experienced through scientific technological mediation of nature. It produces information about time, space and phenomena that no human consciousness could possibly have witnessed. It is as if we are watching hundreds of thousands of years played out in front of our eyes, enabling us to bear witness to events which ordinarily occur on geological time-frames.
– Semiconductor of Earthworks
The Beauty of River Geology and the Trace of Time
The video has one frame per year. Each frame is a 1.7-terapixel snapshot of the entire Earth, generated from 30-meter resolution Landsat images. Landsat collects new imagery over each location in the world about once every two weeks. Using Earth Engine’s analysis platform, each year’s worth of images was combined into a single cloud-free, per-pixel composite for that year.
This scene also comes from the Ucayali River and it is a nice example of how both neck cutoffs and chute cutoffs form. First a neck cutoff takes place that affects the tight bend in the right side of the image; this is followed by a chute cutoff immediately downstream of the neck cutoff location, as the new course of the river happens to align well with a pre-existing chute channel. The third bend in the upper left corner shows some well-developed counter-point-bar deposits.
Geological illustrations, Crystal Palace Park
Volcano
Geoff Mackley, Bradley Ambrose, , after an epic struggle with the weather for 35 days, we became the first people ever to get this close to Marum Volcano’s famed lava lake on Ambrym Island, Vanuatu. Coming within 30 metres of the lava lake down a watercourse, it was possible to stand the heat for only 6 seconds. With Fire Brigade breathing apparatus and heat proof proximity suit it was possible to stand on the very edge and view the incredible show for over 40 minutes.
Icelandic Landscapes – Ethereal Pattern of the Real River
When i studied geology in collage i remember being enamored by river and stream systems. Their ability to shape and transform a landscape is breathtaking. Nothing quite exemplifies this beauty and awe like the images of photographer Andre Ermolaev. Take from a plane window flying 80-100 meters above Icelandic landscapes in his Series ‘Ethereal Pattern of the Real River’.