Bear Valley Resources
Bear Valley is a world-famous locality for structural geology because of its exceptional three dimensional exposure of Pennsylvania Valley and Ridge folds formed during the Alleghanian Orogeny [Nickelsen, 1979; see also Crider et al.]. It is a mecca for field trips in the Northeastern United States. The abandoned open pit is owned by Reading Anthracite Company and permission must be obtained before venturing into the pit.
This page provides access to files that can be used in my programs GMDE and GMDE Lite — and can also be used in GIS programs such as QGIS — so students can plot and analyze their data on an accurate base map with full LiDAR DEM from which the base map was made.
To produce these files, I downloaded the 1 m LiDAR DEM from the Pennsylvania state GIS website. The data were imported into Natural Scene Designer where they were resampled and interpolated to 0.2 m/pixel and contoured using a 5 ft interval. A LiDAR texture shade image (Allmendinger & Karabinos, 2023) was created, draped over the DEM, and then reimaged as a hillshade image. In the above .zip file, the base map is available in MBTIles format with a maximum zoom level of 21 (0.07 m/pixel) and minimum zoom level of 17 (1.19 m/pixel). The DEM is in GridFloat format.
To use these files in GMDE (desktop) for Windows, Mac, or Linux, simple select File>Open and choose the .zip file in the file chooser dialog box. GMDE will expand the zip archive and make a folder with all of the files in the correct place. All you need to do is to choose File>Save to start a GMDEbinary file to which you will add data. To use these files in GMDE Lite for iPhone or iPad, first send the zip archive to your iOS device using AirDrop or iCloud Drive. Alternatively, just visit this web page while on your iOS device and tap the download link. If you are asked where to put the file, choose the Files app. Then, start up GMDE Lite, go to the Settings Screen, tap Open Project, and select the .zip archive (look first in the Recent Files section). GMDE Lite will expand the archive, put all of the files in the right place, and open the project.
References
Nickelsen, R.P., 1979, Sequence of structural stages of the Alleghany Orogeny, at the Bear Valley strip mine, Shamokin, Pennsylvania: American Journal of Science, v. 279, p. 225–271.
Crider, J. G., Gray, M. B., and Weil, A. B., Whaleback Anticline, https://www.virtualfieldgeology.com/whaleback.html, accessed 2024.10.14.
