Geology independent mapping

I'm going to Wales for mine, but quite a few of my course mates are going to Scotland

whereabouts? we're going to isle of skye
Which uni btw?

University of Manchester!
could you ask your friends if they're going to isle of skye?

Nice

Sure, I can ask on my course group chat (I don't know anyone going to Skye off the top of my head but I know it was an option)

oh lol. I'm just trying to find other students going there, so we know people around haha.
when are you heading off for yours?

University of Manchester!
could you ask your friends if they're going to isle of skye?

Skye seems like a great place to map! Beautiful too.

yes , it is. I am a bit worried if i have the required skills etc. Do u guys have any tips?

Most important tip: It is absolutely, 100% essential that you start synthesising your observations into a 3D structure, cross-sections, geological history etc. whilst you're still in the field. Geology is a science, and it follows the scientific method. Hypotheses about structure and so on generate predictions, which you can then test in the field to see if the observations match the predictions. There is absolutely nothing worse than returning from the field, realising that the data you have collected doesn't make sense or doesn't constrain an obvious solution, and then being unable to go back into the field to work out what's going on. You need to be drawing cross-sections and synthesising your observations as you go along. I can laugh about this in retrospect but this was the biggest mistake I made whilst mapping. We had a rather complicated area that we thought we understood, and thereby made a lot of assumptions and interpretations on the basis of that. However, we didn't draw up detailed cross-sections until we had left the mapping area and then realised that our interpretation was physically impossible, and that a lot of our unit classifications and hypotheses were inconsistent and wrong. This could have been completely prevented by doing good cross-sections throughout the mapping project.

Do as much research on the area as you can beforehand. You're doing your project in one of the most intensively studied regions in the world so you don't really have any excuse not to! You're being assessed on how you're inferring structures and environments from your observations so it's not about trying to recreate the published geological map, but having an idea of what to expect will definitely help you out. You will also be expected to be familiar with the literature when you're writing your report, so you might as well start now.

Geology is an observational science, so it's of paramount importance that you make detailed, systematic, clear observations in your notebook. Annotated sketches and panoramic interpreted views are essential. Keep your field slip neat and remember that the field slip is not just for strikes and dips, you should be drawing in the shape of outcrops and annotating it with important observations, as well as all locality numbers.

When you get back from a day of mapping, copy what you've written on your field slip onto a 'neat' copy that you keep indoors. That way, if your field copy gets ruined/blows away/gets soaked/gets eaten by wild animals/etc., you've still got your observations. Also, take photos of your notebook every day. Bring plenty of basemaps with - we took 5 copies of each map with which might have been slight overkill, but not by much. It is very important to have spares, e.g. for testing ideas.

Make sure that you manage your time well. You will naturally bring up the pace as you get more familiar with the rock units (although you may already be familiar with the rocks since they're the classic NW Scotland units), but you definitely do not want to be taking it easy at the start.

You've presumably got a thin-section quota. Think carefully about what rocks you want to make thin-sections out of. If there are some interesting rocks that you think could make good thin-sections then by all means go for them but also remember that you don't just want thin-sections of unusual rocks. The point of thin-sections is to help constrain your palaeoenvironment/igneous processes/metamorphic history so it's most important that you get samples that are actually representative of the rocks you're seeing. Also, think about what benefits you can actually get from the thin-section when you're choosing your samples. A conglomerate or an extremely aphanitic igneous rock might not be the best decisions for a thin-section. Also, check if your department allows you to take acetate peels, which could free up some thin-section space if you've got carbonates in your area (given that you're in Skye, I'm guessing you probably do).

It will expected that most of your observations will be field-based, but you could also consider using remote-sensing. Using satellite images may allow you to more easily understand the large-scale structure of your area (particularly if there are some easily distinguishable rock units or structure-related geomorphology, and also land-use/vegetation can often be related to basement lithology) and if you're very clever, you could even try using ASTER spectral bands to map out lithologies from reflectance data.

Stay strong, and have faith that it will be alright in the end! Mapping is hard. It's a long, complicated, physically and emotionally demanding project. It can be a lot of fun, but there will (without a doubt) be times when you feel like you never want to see another rock again. But it will be okay in the end

Edit: Also, this might be less relevant for you since you're in Scotland, but this was the most useful thing I bought for my mapping project. 100% worth it.

This is by far the best reply I've ever seen haha. Thank you for such a detailed reply.

I've not heard of ASTER technique, I just googled it and it seems pretty much like satellite data but instead looking at reflectance of different lithologies. Do you know which website/software can I use to look at the area in reference to aster bands. And we're not taking acetate peels with us but just HCl to test carbonates. And, yeah I know that bottle looks fancy but I've already spend hundreds on the equipment and clothing haha
Also, do you know what's the thickness of the paper the school gives us because I want to print copies and the usual A4 is thinner.

No problem at all.

So ASTER isn't the name of a technique, it's the name of a sensor on-board a certain satellite. I'll give a brief introduction of how you might be able to use this, but if you want more information you'll need to look it up yourself (or PM me and I'll give you some pointers). As you may know, computers display images in RGB colour space which means that each pixel is displayed using three dots, one of red light (R), one of green light (G), and one of blue light (B). By changing the light intensity of the different dots of light, they mix together to form different colours. We can therefore represent each colour through three numbers, reflecting the intensities of the R, G and B components. If we use 8 bits to represent that, each intensity is out of 255, e.g. pure red light is represented by R,G,B = 255,0,0; yellow light would be represented by 255,255,0; black would be represented by 0,0,0; etc).

For satellites producing 'true colour' images, the satellite will have three colour sensors - one approximately equal to red, one approximately equal to green, and one approximately equal to blue. By mapping the signal from the red colour sensor to red pixels, green to green, and blue to blue, you get a true colour image. Pretty trivial.

But there's no fundamental reason why we have to do this. For instance, rather than having a sensor sensitive to red light (~700nm) and mapping that to red pixels, we could take a sensor sensitive to infrared (e.g. ~1000nm) and map that to red instead. So now, on our image, if something reflects strongly in the infrared, it appears as bright red on our image (even though infrared is normally invisible to the naked eye).

ASTER captures images in 14 different bands. If you have that information, you can map different bands to different colours (or even better, you can map different band ratios to different colours) and thereby produce a false colour image. An simple example of this is vegetation. Chlorophyll reflects strongly in the Near Infrared (NIR) but weakly in the visible red (Red). As a result, we can take the ratio (NIR - Red)/(NIR + Red) and map that to a display colour (e.g. red, or just total intensity from black to white) and that gives us a map which can tell us about vegetation density (this is called NDVI, and you could potentially use that to infer how good exposure is in your area). There are lots of more advanced applications, e.g. by looking at wavelengths at which limestone is reflective or absorbant, you could try to come up with a function that is sensitive to limestone, etc.

I have just remembered that ASTER data is proprietary which means you're probably not going to get access to it unless you've got contacts. LANDSAT-8 OLI imagery is free though, and you will be able to obtain that (I think at a 30m resolution?). So you could give that a go. Off the top of my head, OLI has 7 bands so it's not as good as ASTER, but you can still do stuff with it. I tried to use that in my mapping area and it just didn't work because the exposure was too poor, but it's fun to play around with. In order to do this band manipulation, you'll need a GIS package (like QGIS, which is free).

Acetate peels are a laboratory technique, you wouldn't do that in the field (e.g. see here). It's basically a very low-cost alternative to thin-sections that works for carbonates. But if your department hasn't mentioned them to you, they're probably not doing it (although you could always ask).

I have no idea what thickness of paper your uni is going to give to you. I printed mine out on A3 paper. Don't use A4 basemaps. That's too small! Ideal would be A3 card but A3 paper will be okay too.

Using ASTER data sounds fun. I'll definitely give a try. Yes, I do have ArcGIS (which I think is same as QGIS). I'd PM you if I have any questions about OLI. Idk why my supervisor gave me 12 A4 pages of the map instead of A3. They gave out A3 maps to Environmental resource geology and geochemistry students only. Anyway, thanks again.