Gary Raines gave a summary of the Portland, Oregon meeting, held at the Cordilleran Section GSA meeting this year. The meeting was held because of a growing sense of urgency to build geologic-map information into rapidly developing geographic information systems. There was also some frustration with USGS OFR 95-525. The open-file report dealt only with the display of symbols, not with the underlying structure of the data or with the analysis of the data. Responses included how data will be used in computers and how data will be stored in computers.
Data structure is only superficially related to the display of data.
It was noted that a lot of data is in most geologic map legends. Participants suggested that it was probably important to try to design a standard legend, but that all legends tend to be different making standardization difficult. At the Portland meeting, GSA President Eldridge Moores suggested that a Penrose Conference be held on the data structure of digital geologic maps. It appears that such a conference will be going forward and will be an outstanding opportunity to advance the development of a national database. Jim Cobb stated that presentation of map information is very important to the Kentucky Geological Survey.