We were at a conference the other week and had the pleasure of meeting M. Lee Allison, director and state geologist for the Arizona Geological Survey. Lee tipped us off to the Survey’s online geologic map which we took for a spin in the ESRI booth with Explorer. Lee has a great blog with all sorts of great geologic news and information, and his post on the topic pointed us to the source post at Geologic Frothings, another great site.
The geologic map is published in a variety of formats using ArcGIS Server. At the Arizona Geological Survey’s site you’ll find links to a variety of different formats, ready to use in ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Explorer (and others). Here’s the service showing statewide-scale coverage.
As you zoom closer you’ll notice that it’s a multi-resolution service, revealing more details as you zoom in.
Here we’ve used the Layer Manager (Tools > Manage Layers) to place the geologic map service below the boundaries and places and transportation services in Explorer’s default map.
Now we can use the place names, roads, and boundaries for additional context for knowing where we are in Arizona.
We took things a step further and added the topographic map layer found by clicking the Layer tab in the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center. We ordered the layers using Layer Manager to place the topographic map under the geologic map, and made the geologic map partially transparent (right click the layer to open its context menu, then choose transparency). Note that we’ve also opened the legend for the service.
We think this is a great example of ArcGIS Desktop’s cartography coupled with ArcGIS Server and its capability to deliver services in a wide variety of formats. And of course this makes a great service for Explorer users that want to do more with Arizona geology.
