Revitalizing the classic "Streetcar to Subduction" Field Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area via Google Earth
Abstract
We have developed a digital field trip guide of the San Francisco Bay Area to provide an interactive and immersive mobile learning experience. In collaboration with Google and supported by the American Geophysical Union, we revised Clyde Wahrhaftig's 1984 guide "A Streetcar to Subduction, and other Plate Tectonic Trips by Public Transport in San Francisco" for the modern digital audience. We developed "Streetcar to Subduction 2.0" via the newly-released Google Earth content creation tools so the guide will be available through the browser-based version of Google Earth. This new platform allows field trip participants to adapt and personalize their field experience via a smartphone or cellular-enabled device in the field. The guide features a dozen general locations (e.g. "San Gregorio Fault", "Marin Headlands", or "Angel Island") and is aimed at an undergraduate geology student audience. Logistical details such as directions and durations are outsourced to the user's preferred map app. Each location features 5-15 sites, which are described using a combination of original imagery, video, and other digital media to guide the user to the key characteristics of an exposure or feature that facilitate geological interpretation. Additional technical details for the geoscientific specialist are hosted on an accompanying "deep dive" webpage to provide discovery-based learning opportunities for users of all levels of expertise. The new "Streetcar" guide will be premiered at the AGU Fall Meeting to coincide with the return to the Moscone Center after 2 years away and on the 35th anniversary of Wahrhaftig's original publication. Content creation tools in Google Earth are freely accessible and we hope this guide can inspire similar efforts in other areas.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.T23F0442K
- Keywords:
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- 4302 Geological;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 8106 Continental margins: transform;
- TECTONOPHYSICS;
- 8170 Subduction zone processes;
- TECTONOPHYSICS;
- 8175 Tectonics and landscape evolution;
- TECTONOPHYSICS