topic Re: Rock formations in Forestry Questions

Rock formations

Nikolai_KolbaKolba — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:05:43 GMT

Hello, my name is Nik. I am a current student working on a Natural Resource project on finding suitability of habitats to find snakes. I am currently searching for a shapefile of a open rock formations in Pennsylvania. I am wondering if there is a current dataset that has listed any rock formations above ground or how I would be able to find quickly rock formations by using aerial imagery?

Re: Rock formations

AdrianWelsh — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:09:41 GMT

Have you tried contacting the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources? They appear to have several webpages concerning their maps and digital data:

PA DCNR - Geology - Digital Data

This may be a good place to start.

Re: Rock formations

AdrianWelsh — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:11:38 GMT

It looks like they have a section where you can download their GIS data for the geologic maps:

PA DCNR - Geology - Map 1

And click on the Map 1, Data. This will download a 64 Megabyte zip file.

Re: Rock formations

Nikolai_KolbaKolba — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:19:20 GMT

I have downloaded this data and the data provided gives the substrata underneath the soil. I am only interested of the rocks above the soil level across the state. I do appreciate the help Adrian! I just emailed them as well to see if they have such a feature class or shapefile with this information.

Re: Rock formations

AdrianWelsh — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:25:52 GMT

It may be your best bet to contact them as they would know what data they have (and being that it's a state agency, they can likely give it to your for free, hopefully). You may look into the PA Spatial Data Clearinghouse for GIS data but it doesn't look like it has much:

PASDA - The Pennsylvania Spatial Data Clearinghouse

I would be curious to know if they respond to you about data.

I am not sure if this helps or not but there are some wider-area maps for geology of North America that you can use:

http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=2967ae2d1be14a8fbf5888b4ac75a01f

and

http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6a0f6412ce314055951ab5e6dccb4e7d

Re: Rock formations

Nikolai_KolbaKolba — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 22:30:54 GMT

I have already looked thoroughly through PASDA - The Pennsylvania Spatial Data Clearinghouse. They were one of the first places I investigated as well as GIS, CAD, GPS, mobile industry maps,news,jobs,data free software. Both weren't very helpful for this section of my project. I might be able to clip those clips for geology of North America to create these maps but it will take some time to investigate this issue. Ill let you know by tomorrow if I could do this.

Re: Rock formations

AdrianWelsh — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:23:01 GMT

Yeah, that PASDA site seems like a good idea but but leaves a lot for the imagination... I am curious to hear if the North American datasets worked out of if the PA DCNR responded to you. Good luck!

Re: Rock formations

BrettAbernethy — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 03:00:25 GMT

Hi,

I am a Geologist. What you are looking for is an "Outcrop Map". An outcrop is a visible surface of bedrock. So you might want to use search terms such as "Pennsylvania outcrop map GIS shape file"

Re: Rock formations

AdrianWelsh — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 22:29:41 GMT

Nikolai Kolba Kolba were you able to find a suitable solution for what you were looking for? Did anyone at the state offices of Pennsylvania respond to you?

Re: Rock formations

Nikolai_KolbaKolba — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:54:04 GMT

hey, so i did get reply for multiple people and they gave me a shapefile of bedrock which is not what i was looking for. Brett Abernathy was correct in saying that i am looking dor outcrops of pennsylvania

Re: Rock formations

AdrianWelsh — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 16:11:59 GMT

That is unfortunate. Maybe this type of data does not exist at the state-wide level? There may be bits and pieces of it scattered around. Have you tried asking the folks who gave you a shapefile about a potential outcrop dataset?

This may be a little far-fetched but have you tried contacting people in the Penn State Geology department? There may be someone there who could point you in the write direction (since the State does not seem to have this resource):

Re: Rock formations

DanielAmrine — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 15:49:21 GMT

Unfortunately both PA and WV (where I live) are heavily forested so finding actual outcrops requires many hours in the field. I know that Cooper's rock state park in WV has both outcrops and large boulders strung out along the ridges and this makes some great snake habitat. There is a trail to Raven Rock ( an outcrop along the ridge ) and the utility company cut back all the trees along some high voltage lines. The rattle snakes love this part of the trail!

Also I would recommend looking for "leaf off" imagery and then starting with that at a similar scale to the attached image. Some state geologists in PA may have personal layers about outcrops...or at least a good personal knowledge of where they are...but in this region of the country I don't think outcrop polygons have been drawn!