Implementing digital mapping and data acquisition in geology field courses
Digital mapping techniques are a rapidly emerging field that experienced great attention over the last years in engineering and governmental offices, and in research institutions. This is because digital mapping tools became versatile, economic, and allow for fast data acquisition, sharing, and database storage. Our project aims at introducing digital mapping techniques in the Earth Science field courses and prepare students with new skills for their professional careers and research projects.
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Course description
Project description
When geoscience students attend engineering geology, hydrogeology, structural geology or other field courses of the BSc and MSc programmes both students and lecturers associate the field course with learning or teaching relevant practical skills and tools for acquiring and interpreting geodata. Evenings are frequently spent with compiling and sharing obtained data, data processing, and group discussions, besides important socializing. Data acquisition is mostly "traditional", meaning with paper and pen, mechanical geological compass and printed maps brought to the field. The traditional techniques are important. However, they can be time-intensive, data sharing and management can be difficult and/or delayed, and mapping standards may vary greatly among students. Digital mapping using field tablet computers with internet connectivity, GNSS, accelerometer and other motion sensors and digital field data acquisition systems, such as camera-equipped drones for aerial photogrammetry or laserscanners (e.g., for mapping in underground environments), are emerging, already very popular, and expected to become more and more important in science and industry. Many geoscientists and practitioners already apply digital field mapping and data acquisition tools for interpreting geological environments. The use of such tools is emerging because the acquired datasets allow for new analyses and comprehensive documentation, e.g., in engineering projects. At ETH, e.g., USYS uses digital mapping for student courses to carry out field experiments based on crowd sampling (GISsmox), or OMLETH supports outdoor mobile learning. Digital mapping in the Earth Sciences requires a wider range of field data acquisition tools and programmes, because the required geodata are of different spatial dimensions, and accessible or remote from the observer. Besides GNSS support, field tablet computers need to capture orientation data and support georeferenced, digital field drawing. While the theoretical basis of remote sensing techniques is lain in our Geological Site Investigation M.Sc. course (651-4065-00L), hands-on experience including database infrastructure is missing. In the today's connected working environment, "field" no longer means limited connectivity or access to data, or limited data processing capacities. Quite the contrary, practical geologists need access to databases in the field, and benefit greatly from acquiring data in digital form from the start. However, they need to know how to set up and operate digital data acquisition systems in the field for their specific needs and understand their limitations.
Supported by an Innovedum focus project, which started in May 2017, we implemented digital mapping and data acquisition techniques in an engineering geology field course. For the focus project we selected the existing Engineering Geology Field Course II "Rock" (651-4066-00L) to test and assess digital mapping techniques. The “Rock” field course is compulsory in the Engineering Geology Master programme, but is also taken by students with minor in Geology.
The course takes place every spring semester over 2x5 days and aims at teaching field methods to characterise and classify rocks and rock masses. Besides different techniques to obtain field data, structural mapping exercises and field tests, the course teaches practical skills how the acquired data can be analysed, correlated, and how geological, geomorphological, and hydrological observations can be integrated into geomechanical models. While most of the analyses have already been carried out using specific software solutions, field data were obtained with mapping board, paper, pencil, and mechanical compass. Thus, the course was an ideal setting to test digital mapping.
The main goal of our project is to implement digital field mapping techniques (mapping with field tablet computers, acquiring geodata with drones) in Earth Sciences field courses, and undergraduate and graduate student projects. We aim at teaching our students how to plan a digital mapping campaign, and to apply and understand the capabilities and limitations of digital mapping and data acquisition tools with own, hands-on experience. Students will also learn important new skills in data management for field applications. In summary, introducing digital mapping helps us to 1. upgrade courses to the emerging field of digital mapping, with new applications for Earth Science graduates, 2. draw new interests in successful, well-established field courses, 3. provide students with new and necessary skills, and by this 4. prepare them for their professional careers and their research projects. At the same time, we substantially reduce or omit printed handouts and mapping paper, and make background information available and interactive on student tablet computers.
The obtained experiences with digital geological mapping have been discussed and evaluated during the last three years and are very positive for students and lecturers. Digital mapping techniques will be implemented in other field courses of the Earth Science Department. Our vision is that future field courses in the Earth Sciences from BSc to MSc level will make systematic use of digital mapping and data acquisition tools. To foster the Department’s digital mapping strategy, two new block courses for BSc to PhD students were introduced, “Application of Small Drones for Geological Data Acquisition” in 2018, and “Introduction to Digital Mapping” in 2020.
