This page is a compilation of links to interesting and innovative resources on the Interweb who are trying to do things differently. If you have any suggestions for additions, please add them to the comments. Enjoy!
RockD is another offering from the Shana Peters Team at Wisconsin University. You can use it to check the local geology, check-in to local geology localities, create your own check-ins, create field trips, look up the palaeogeographic history of your location and find out what minerals and fossils are within a 20km radius!
Infoterre is a great web-based GIS of all the geological maps and data available in France! I must admit I spend most of my time reviewing the geochemical surveys to see where the gold is!
Mindat.org is the world’s largest open database of minerals, rocks, meteorites and the localities they come from. Useit, contribute to it!
Mindat.org is run by the not-for-profit Hudson Institute of Mineralogy.
Shanan Peters and his team in the University of Wisconsin have created an amazing data and text mining tool called GeoDeepdive that searches the complete content of nearly 12 million publications to find the answers to your questions! Maybe we don’t need more data, we just need to take a better look at all the data we have already!
The team at the British Geological Survey (BGS) have created a Minecraft model for the UK. Go and explore the geology of the UK in Minecraft!
If you are planning a trip to New Zealand then you should take a look at GeoTrips. The guys at GNS Science have compiled a great map-based resource to show you all the best GeoTrips in NZ.
TimeScale Creator: A great tool for creating chronostratigraphic columns.
No excuse not to brush up your seismic interpretation skills: OpendTect is free to download. There are several free plugins as well, and lots of very sophisticated commercial plug ins.
GPlates is desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate-tectonics.
GPlates offers a novel combination of interactive plate-tectonic reconstructions, geographic information system (GIS) functionality and raster data visualisation. GPlates enables both the visualisation and the manipulation of plate-tectonic reconstructions and associated data through geological time. GPlates runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS X.
Visible Geology have created a great 3D visualisation app that runs in your browser and enables you to create stratigraphy, fold it, erode it, bury it, then section and drill it, all in 3D!
A great site, ram packed full of everything you ever wanted to know about Petrophysics and more. There are lots of down-loadables too.
Critical Thinker Academy: Kevin de Laplante is doing great work compiling online videos to help us understand critical thinking skills such as argumentation. There is also a series in preparation on the philosophy of science, which looks good.
Haakon Fossen: This man is doing great things to make structural geology more accessible to the masses! His text books are great, his illustrations are brilliant and he makes most of the illustrations freely accessible for us to use and learn from, together with supporting animations and exercises. You can access them here. Don’t forget to check out Haakon’s Structural Geology Blog as well for even more valuable insights.
SEPM Strata: We do not have time to keep up with the latest innovations in everything, so we need to find groups of dedicated individuals who are keen to keep abreast of the changes, and more importantly, tell us! SEPM Strata is a site that does exactly that for sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy. The are lots of explanatioons, examples, animations and videos. A great sedimentology refernce resource.
Blinkist: Our philosophy at Geolumina is that you should improve how you think, so that you can be more focused in learning what to think. You need Blinkist. There is a lot of literature out there on how to think, how to organise your mind, how to make decisions, how to problem-solve and many more. But when do we ever have a chance to read them all? That is what Blinkist is for. They have collated over 1000 book summaries that capture the key messages from the most important non-fiction books out there.
Join now, read, learn. Better still ask me to invite you using the contact us form, then I will get 1 free week of membership for everybody I invite!
Petrowiki: There are many Wikis out there and Petrowiki is one of the best. The wiki started with a upload of the complete Petroleum Engineers Handbook and is being augmented by a great many articles from experienced industry specialists. Please use it, and even more importantly, contribute.
Collaborative resources such as wikis are the future for technology-based industries. Gone are the days that opco staff can hold all the knowledge they need in their heads. What we need to do is share, then focus and prioritise the information based on experience of what works and what doesn’t. This is something we learn from experience. This is wisdom. This is what we must share.
Agile Geoscience: Matt Hall and Evan Bianco are taking petroleum geophysics by the scruff of the neck and giving it a good shake. Go to their site for a lot of interesting blog articles, innovative web apps, hackathons, and great publications.