Summary:

Around the world, geological mapping of sediments and rocks has been an important activity for over two centuries. In the US, the activity was renewed for the digital era by the National Geologic Mapping Act (NGMA) of 1992, which mandated the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program (NCGMP), with mapping made consistent and available as the National Geologic Map Database (NGMDB). The NGMDB Phase One publication catalog is mature, the Phase Two standards are complete, and Phase Three GIS database pilots are complete. In spring 2019, the US House of Representatives, and the Association of American State Geologists (AASG), therefore called for immediate implementation of NGMDB Phase Three, as the queryable, seamless, scalable, 3D geology for the nation that is urgently needed for analyses and applications.   

Biography:

Harvey Thorleifson has been Director of the Minnesota Geological Survey since 2003. After attending the Universities of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Colorado, he was a geologist at the Geological Survey of Canada from 1986 until 2003. He is a former President of the Geological Association of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Earth scientists, and Association of American State Geologists.