Ron Blakey Course a Hit!

Title: Ron Blakey Course a Hit!
Author: Kristine Peterson
Publication: The Outcrop, March 2010, p. 17-18

Ron Blakey demonstrated how he constructs his world-renown paleogeographic maps to a fascinated audience on January 28, 2010 at RMAG’s Paleogeographic and Paleotectonic Maps – Use, Construction, Interpretation, and Example.

Ron Blakey with a copy of his recent book authored with Wayne Ranny, Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau. This volume is published by the Grand Canyon Association, vvww.grandcanyon.org.

Dr. Blakey showed how he starts with regional atlases and a variety of source material to sketch out the paleomaps with geologic features including plate boundaries, ocean shelves and continental areas for selected time slices. He then adds paleocurrent data, fossil data, lithologic data and paleoclimate data. Dr. Blakey is a master synthesizer of data and the attendees were all impressed by the amount of data that is contained on the maps.

The mountains and rivers that are finally “painted” on the Photoshop maps are actual topographic features captured and rotated or colored using GeoMapApp, a free visualization application from the Marine Geoscience Data System at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (www.geomapapp.org).

The 162 participants (including 14 students from various universities) each received a CD-Rom containing all presentations for the day and a reference list of selected source data that Dr. Blakey often utilizes.

Attendees were enthusiastic in their course comments; “Great education and entertainment,” “Very valuable material. The man is a master” and “Probably one the best courses I have ever taken from RMAG.”