Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, he is now a post-doc at the University of Johannesburg. 
Kim is a little concerned that her geology-themed Googling keeps on bringing up stuff that she herself has written. This might have something to do with her blog being a top-notch source of geological insight, of course (someone is clearly going to have to work on her raging egomaniac chops, or the internet is going to eat her up). Still, it did remind me of an idea that I toyed with when I first heard of Google's funky custom search function, which basically allows you to tune a search so that it only looks through, or prioritises, pages from what you deem to be the worth corners of the internet. Therefore, I present the Geology Search Engine:
Thus far, I've only added a handful of sites, like the USGS and NASA's Earth observatory. To be useful, it really needs more, so if you think this might be a good idea feel free to suggest some, or lots. If it works out, it's another thing to try and squeeze into the sidebar, of course...
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Comments
That's a great idea. (You realize that I, at least, will suggest it as a shortcut resource for students.)
I'm trying to think of other sites that I go to a lot. State geological surveys often have good sites. EPA is hard to search through, but I go there for water quality questions.
I'll plug the question, as well, and see what other sites people come up with.
Posted by: Kim | October 14, 2008 1:01 PM
Chris, the search engine says it only searches 9 sites - and it lists 5 - but our blogs still come up for searches like "turbidites" and "mylonites." Also, Wikipedia and a couple dictionaries come up. Maybe you included these things - just wondering.
I think the Volcano Observatory Sites are interesting, I'll get some URL's later today or tomorrow.
Thanks!
Posted by: Silver Fox | October 14, 2008 5:19 PM
Maybe the volcano observatory sites would all be searched under the USGS site. I'm not sure, so here are their webpages:
CVO: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/
AVO: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/
HVO: http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/
LVO: http://lvo.wr.usgs.gov/
Mariana Islands: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/nmi/activity/
YVO: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
At least one,the Alaska Volcano Observatory, is not at all within the USGS framework.
Posted by: Silver Fox | October 14, 2008 8:43 PM
It's currently set so that it still searches the entire web, but just pushes results from the selected sites to the top. Once I've stuck in a wider range of sites, I might change that so it only searches the ones listed. I'll see how it develops.
Posted by: Chris Rowan | October 15, 2008 2:27 AM
Ah, I get it! I do like it, works better than just the regular Google Search.
Posted by: Silver Fox | October 15, 2008 8:11 AM
Perhaps this is included under the USGS umbrella, but if it's not I think this is a fabulous resource!
http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Geolex/geolex_home.html
Posted by: Perry | October 15, 2008 3:42 PM
Geology search engine is a top idea. Wikipedia is often better than a lot of online geological dictionaries. You might want to include:
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/zoom/?view=eveday&lon=150&lat=-4 for seismic activity on SW Pacific
high end geoscience research in australia: http://www.csiro.gov.au/science/MiningMinerals.html
government geoscience reseach in australia:
http://www.ga.gov.au
sorry don't have time for more... K
Posted by: Kim | October 17, 2008 5:27 PM
For geology pedagogy, you could include http://serc.carleton.edu/index.html
Posted by: ScienceWoman | October 17, 2008 9:10 PM