surficial geology

Colluvium vs Alluvium

UPDATE: The tremendous response to this blog post led to an international and interdisciplinary survey on how these terms are/should be defined. The results of… Read More

23 February 2015

Physiography of the Des Moines Lobe

This GIS package contains a pair of spatial data sets that have been generated for the purpose of studying the physiography of the Des Moines Lobe… Read More

12 October 2014

Using soil surveys to map Quaternary parent materials and landforms

The integration of soil survey maps with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allows for an almost infinite level of collaboration across disciplines that use information related to soil databases. This study created a Quaternary geologic map by categorizing soil descriptions into a geologic context and joining the attributes with the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database in ArcGIS®. The resulting map communicates many of the spatial intricacies of the Des Moines Lobe landform with 15 map units based on geologic units. Read More

9 March 2008