USGS Open-File Report 03-135: Geologic database for digital geology of California, Nevada, and Utah—An application of the North American Data Model

Geologic database for digital geology of California, Nevada, and Utah—An application of the North American Data Model

By David R. Bedford, Steve Ludington, Constance M. Nutt, Paul A. Stone, David M. Miller, Robert J. Miller, David L. Wagner, and George J. Saucedo

Introduction

The USGS is creating an integrated national database for digital state geologic maps that includes stratigraphic, age, and lithologic information. The majority of the conterminous 48 states have digital geologic base maps available, often at scales of 1:500,000. This product is a prototype, and is intended to demonstrate the types of derivative maps that will be possible with the national integrated database. This database permits the creation of a number of types of maps via simple or sophisticated queries, maps that may be useful in a number of areas, including mineral-resource assessment, environmental assessment, and regional tectonic evolution.

This database is distributed with three main parts: a Microsoft Access 2000 database containing geologic map attribute data, an Arc/Info (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, California) Export format file containing points representing designation of stratigraphic regions for the Geologic Map of Utah, and an ArcView 3.2 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, California) project containing scripts and dialogs for performing a series of generalization and mineral resource queries.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Spatial data for the respective stage geologic maps is not distributed with this report. The digital state geologic maps for the states involved in this report are separate products, and two of them are produced by individual state agencies, which may be legally and/or financially responsible for this data. However, the spatial datasets for maps discussed in this report are available to the public. Questions regarding the distribution, sale, and use of individual state geologic maps should be sent to the respective state agency. We do provide suggestions for obtaining and formatting the spatial data to make it compatible with data in this report. See section ‘Obtaining and Formatting Spatial Data’ in the PDF version of the report.

First posted May 21, 2003

Database MDB (5.1 MB)
Microsoft Access 2000 database of geologic attributes for digital geology of California, Nevada, and Utah

UT Regions E00 (3.4 MB)
ESRI interchange file for stratigraphic regions used in the digital geology of Utah

Metadata TXT (12 kB)
FGDC-compliant metadata for ut_regions.e00

ArcView Project file APR (108 kB)
ESRI Arc View 3.2 project file for sample mineral resource and generalization queries of the database

lithtree ZIP (12 kB)
Microsoft Windows executable for browsing the lithology hierarchy of the database

Complete digital package ZIP (2,2 MB)
Zip file containing the seven files listed above

For additional information, contact:
Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center
U.S. Geological Survey
345 Middlefield Road, MS 901
Menlo Park, CA 94025-3591
http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/gmeg/

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Suggested citation:

Bedford, David R., Ludington, Steve, Nutt, Constance M., Stone, Paul A., Miller, David M., Miller, Robert J., Wagner, David L., Saucedo, George J., 2003, Geologic database for digital geology of California, Nevada, and Utah—An application of the North American Data Model: U. S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 03-135, 35 pp., http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/0135/.