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Anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility and other magnetic measurements in the Mt Edgar dome of the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia

StraboSpot (StraboSpot.org) is a digital data system for collection, management and sharing of geologic data from the macro- to the microscale. Due to the pandemic, it was not possible to organize field-based workshops and fieldtrips in Summer 2020 for demonstrating and eliciting community feedback on the StraboSpot data system. Rather, we decided to run a series of week-long virtual workshops to familiarize practioners with the StraboSpot data system. Workshops were organized by discipline (sedimentology, structural geology, and petrology), each with approximately 100 participants, including U.S.-based and foreign scientists. The daily structure of the workshop was a 2-3 hour block with presentations from several StraboSpot team members, followed by an afternoon help desk. We reassigned participant support costs (originally intended for field-based meetings) to provide a small ($200-250) stipend to U.S.-based participants if they agreed to fully input a data set into StraboSpot and make it publicly available. This approach to increasing engagement – which was not part of original dissemination plan – was extremely successful. Workshop participants who signed up for the stipend were generally very engaged in the data system, provided important feedback on the design and vocabulary, and are highly likely to use StraboSpot in the future. Further, it helped to populate the database. People who received the stipend also presented their StraboSpot projects to the larger group on the last day of the workshop, often with an impressive data set. Because of Covid restrictions on fieldwork in summer 2021, we intend to continue providing stipends for young professionals (graduate students, post-doctoral fellows) to use the StraboSpot system for their thesis or project-based fieldwork. In addition to getting detailed feedback, we hope these testers will become a cohort of motivated users that will teach and encourage others to use the StraboSpot data system.

The StraboSpot database allows users to permanently store and query geologic field data directly from a mobile application or through a web application at strabospot.org. The first version of the mobile application, StraboSpot, has many of the features needed to collect data in the field, including offline basemaps, a developed vocabulary, and a built-in compass. However, it was intended for use on small smartphones, and users found the form-style user interface inefficient and cumbersome to use. The newly developed StraboSpot2 packages the same core functionality of the original Strabospot into an intuitive, simple design that greatly increases data collection efficiency. Because the target device in an iPad (of any size), we were able to take a map-based approach that fits multiple different types of field workflows and expands the ability for the user to view and explore datasets. New core features include: 1) Color-coding of points and polygons by customizable geological unit tags or conceptual tags; 2) Viewing all data collected at a spot in a “notebook view”; 3) Making sketches or annotate photographs; 4) Filtering spots, images, or tags by map extent; and 5) Facilitating the back up of datasets using integration with the iPadOS file system. StraboSpot2 is developed in React Native, a cross-platform development environment. This development environment will allow future versions to possibly support iPhone (iOS) and Android devices.

Drone-based Dual band TPR radiometer for Snow Water Content determination