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The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference was an event held at Arizona State University's Tempe campus between February 28 and March 1, 2019. The conference marked an unprecedented exploration of the science, art, history, and practice of Grand Canyon cartography. It was a celebration and critical examination of the cartographic history of a global landscape icon.

Free and open to all, the conference delivered a two-day program of map-based story-telling, transdisciplinary analysis, state-of-the-art geospatial and cartographic demonstrations, engaging hands-on activities, and open community dialogue.

Inspiration and justification for convening such a conference was the confluence of two milestones in Grand Canyon history: (1) the centennial (1919-2019) of the legislation that led to Grand Canyon National Park, and (2) the sesquicentennial (1869-2019) of John Wesley Powell's famous first exploration and mapping survey through the canyons carved by the Colorado River, including the Grand Canyon.

The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference originated as a component of a larger research project supported through an ASU Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) seed grant -- Mapping Grand Canyon: A Critical Cartographic History.

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Place-Based Teaching and Learning at Grand Canyon: In-Person and Virtual – Video Recording

Description
Grand Canyon is a dynamic natural landscape that encodes nearly two billion years of geological history, and which is also situated within a cultural landscape that encodes the names, experiences, and lives of people from ancestral Native Americans to American explorers and settlers to modern visitors from across the nation…

Grand Canyon is a dynamic natural landscape that encodes nearly two billion years of geological history, and which is also situated within a cultural landscape that encodes the names, experiences, and lives of people from ancestral Native Americans to American explorers and settlers to modern visitors from across the nation and around the world. Place-based ways of teaching integrate the natural and the cultural attributes of a place or region such as Grand Canyon to facilitate learning. For the last century, Grand Canyon National Park has offered interpretive programs and resources to visitors that hew to this place-based philosophy, enabling millions of Park visitors to make intellectual and emotional connections to the landscape and its natural and cultural history. Geological and educational research have contributed to the interpretive mission of the Park with new research-based resources such as the Trail of Time Exhibition. Even more recently, advances in visualization and instructional technology have brought the pedagogical power of Grand Canyon to the online realm through immersive, interactive virtual field trips (iVFTs), which have the potential to enable many millions more to explore and learn from the natural and cultural landscapes of Grand Canyon, including its most physically inaccessible places. Current research is directed toward rendering iVFTs ever more authentic and place-based, while also enhancing the accessibility and effectiveness of in-person field experiences for visitors and students at Grand Canyon.
ContributorsSemken, Steven (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)
Created2019-03-01
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Geologic Mapping of Grand Canyon, 150 Years and Counting – Video Recording

Description
Geologic maps are to geologists what equations are to mathematicians; they symbolically and compactly encode many layers of hard-won scientific knowledge for those who know how to read them. The best ones also are beautiful. There have been great challenges and great progress in geologic mapping of Grand Canyon over…

Geologic maps are to geologists what equations are to mathematicians; they symbolically and compactly encode many layers of hard-won scientific knowledge for those who know how to read them. The best ones also are beautiful. There have been great challenges and great progress in geologic mapping of Grand Canyon over the past 150 years. Dutton era (1886) maps represent major advances in cartography and geology. The Huntoon et al., (1996) 1:62,500 “Dragon Map” of Eastern Grand Canyon is the best-selling geologic map of all time; it was produced by offset printing and is now out of print. The Timmons and Karlstrom (2012) Geologic Map of Eastern Grand Canyon at 1:24,000 is the most detailed available for large areas; it has been digitized and is being converted to GIS files. The Billingsley’s USGS maps of the entire Grand Canyon region are available at 1:100,000 as GIS files online. Next challenges are to incorporate multiple scales in Google Earth-style zooming in interactive 3-D geologic portrayals. This requires higher detail boots-on-the-ground geologic mapping than is currently available in many areas as well as innovative ideas for 3-D visualizations. Imagery and visualization technologies are available such that this “Grand Challenge” is within reach.
ContributorsKarlstrom, Karl E (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)
Created2019-02-28