Billions of years, decades of work yield modern map

Jack Reed watched 25 years of his life -- and the entire geologic history of North America -- roll off printing presses late last week in Colorado Springs on broad sheets of brightly colored paper.

Reed, 73, the Denver-based scientist emeritus for the U.S. Geological Survey, is one of three geologists who spent more than two decades compiling the data that were transformed by two cartographers into a highly detailed map measuring 6 square feet.

The cartographers, Will Stettner and Linda Masonic, flew out from the Geological Survey's headquarters in Reston, Va., last week and with Reed oversaw the printing job at Pikes Peak Lithographing Co.

The printing company, with clients ranging from fine artists to National Geographic, is one of only a handful in the United States with presses large enough and workers skillful enough for such exacting work, owner Scott McLeod said.

"This map is really unique," he said. "It's one of the most spectacular printing jobs we have ever done."

The map was commissioned by the Geological Society of America to update the last such map, created in 1965. Reed's late father, John, also a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, mapped Alaska for that effort. That map was an update of the society's first geologic map, which was created in 1906.

The latest map, which depicts the geology of the Earth from the North Pole to Venezuela and from a bit of Ireland to Siberia, reflects marked advances in scientific knowledge since the 1965 geologic map.

The swirl of colors -- 700 when shades and patterns are counted -- depict the creation of the continent in the Hudson Bay region and its glacial but raucous spread outward.

It shows the type of rock that makes up each bit of the continent and its age. The most ancient rock -- 4 billion years old -- is found on the coast of Greenland, which was part of northern Canada until it fractured and drifted off.

The youngest rock?

The sediment being deposited in the Mississippi Delta.

Using the latest scientific evidence, the map shows impact zones where asteroids struck the Earth. Among them: a giant crater in the Gulf of Mexico that is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and another in Chesapeake Bay that wasn't discovered until a couple of years ago.

The map also shows many fault, fold and thrust zones that indicate the tectonic forces that are pulling the continent apart.

"The good news? It will be a few tens of millions of years before Los Angeles is pushed far north and down into the Aleutian Trench," said Reed, an energetic, ruddy-faced man who sat on the floor of the print shop to trace that cataclysmic journey on a copy of the map.

Thanks to recent deep-sea exploration and Reed's colleague, Brian Tucholke of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the map now depicts the geology of the sea floor, from the deep trenches -- 21,000 feet -- off the Aleutian Islands to the salt domes near Veracruz to the submerged canyons just off the eastern seaboard.

Reed said his friend, renowned Colorado photographer John Fielder, best characterized the map, calling it a depiction of the "grand architecture of the continent."

Cartographer Stettner said he learned a lot about the continent while manipulating the 17,000 layers of digital data needed to construct the map.

"It's very impressive. You get the big picture," he said while poring over proofs of the map. "Even as a nongeologist, I started asking questions."

The 3,200 copies of the map, along with a 3-foot by 4-foot sheet containing the keys to reading it, will be sold by the geological society for $150 each. Reed said likely buyers will include universities, government agencies and commercial interests such as oil companies, which are interested in formations on the sea floor that might indicate the presence of oil.

"It's nice to have something finished," said Reed, who compiled his part of the map while doing other work for the Geological Survey and writing two books. The books were about Precambrian rocks in the United States and the geology of the Teton Range.

Still, Reed said the decades of work he and his colleagues put into the map won't truly be over until it is hanging in a classroom somewhere and eager minds pore over the wealth of knowledge to be mined from it.

"The proof of the pudding is if it will be used as we hope it will be," he said.

Copyright 2005
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