The Wise Report
Geologic guidebooks tell stories about the history of our continent’s beautiful natural landscapes, but to date they have not been easily obtained by today’s researchers. To facilitate greater access to these guidebooks, the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) and the Geoscience Information Society (GSIS) have jointly launched a free database, which catalogs decades of these guidebooks from across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
The Geologic Guidebooks of North America Database – as it is called – fills a significant gap in existing geoscience information. Many parts of North America are not sufficiently mapped by geological surveys, so guidebooks from university field trips and amateur excursions can contain some of the richest information available – or in some cases, the only information available – for a given location. Now, anyone can explore more than 10,000 of these guidebook references with ease using the geographic search option, which was previously not possible.