CREATING A PRELIMINARY GIS MAP FOR THE PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES OF ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA BY INTEGRATING GEOLOGICAL MAPS WITH

PLEISTOCENE SPECIMEN DATA FROM THE COOPER CENTER AND OTHER RESOURCES

A Thesis Proposal Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Fullerton Department of Geological Sciences James F Parham, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science In Geological Sciences By Shawn Robison Date

Background/Introduction The John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center is a curation program and facility in Orange County, California. The Cooper Center houses over 2,000,000 fossil specimens from Orange County, from over 1,400 paleontological localities. Only a small fraction of these finds, approximately 9,000 specimens, have been inventoried and only a fraction of those are georeferenced. There are also many published and unpublished articles that name locations throughout Orange County that need to be put into a database. The data associated with the Cooper Centers specimens have been received in a variety of formats because they are derived from different sources such as individual collectors or various Cultural Resource Management (CRM) companies. Some of the localities may have latitude and longitudes coordinates, township references, or are just plotted on a paper map. For the coordinate data that are electronically recorded, they may be in different projection systems that need to be standardized. There is a pressing need to get these locality data into a standard format that can be used to create a geographic information system (GIS) digital map. This map would incorporate data for evaluating, and presenting different forms of information such as raster and vector images and taking data and images that are outdated and combine them with current information. We would also like to be able to plot locations in Google Earth, which is a user friendly program that can be used by curators and directors for presentations, as well as for research. For my thesis I will seek to create this resource by developing protocols for handling disparate data types in different programs (see below) and also I will create an example map based on Pleistocene records. This project hopes ultimately be able to provide a framework for creating GIS maps of Cooper Center specimens. We need ways to analyze information, and make it user friendly so it is useful for researchers, outreach organizations and CRM companies.

Materials and Methods

My project will use data from the Cooper Centers collection as well as from peer-reviewed literature and grey literature (CRM reports). To begin with, I will standardize the locality data from the various reports and collections and put everything into single Universal Transverse Mercator -UTM (see below). Once that is accomplished I can establish a protocol to move/transfer data between programs. As a case study, this project will focus on the Pleistocene, a time period that is well represented in Orange County, spanning from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. Pleistocene fossils are often abundant,

well-preserved, and can be dated very precisely, making this a well-studied time period. With the help of GIS maps and Google Earth, we will easily be able to determine where there are locations throughout Orange County.

The materials and programs that I will use include the following:

Specify Specify is an application for museum study and data handling that is used by the Cooper Center to track specimen transactions, and for associating locality and other data with specimens. Specify is a good program due to its many features, such as the ability to streamline data for museum collections. Specify is not particularly user friendly to the public that is unfamiliar with this type of setting, therefore it is important to be able to easily transfer the data into a user friendly environment. Geographic Information System GIS uses layers of geographic data to produce spatial analysis by combining spatial data of geographical features with attribute data about the feature, allowing users to visualize data in a new way. For example the spatial data in this project are the fossils locations in Orange County and the attribute data are the information on what type of fossil it is such as Pleistocene, mammal, etc. This combination will allow these fossil data to be viewed in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared amongst groups or in presentations. The datasets will be imported into ArcInfo. ArcInfo is the GIS software that allows the files to be edited, and converted so the end user can visualize, manage, and analyze the GIS data. Maps I will be incorporating various geologic maps of Orange County. The geologic maps will be downloaded from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Association of American State Geologists (AASG), and will include geologic formations, rivers, lakes and elevations. UTM This data needs to be retrieved and then put into the Universal Transverse Mercator that is a geographic coordinate system that uses a 2-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system to give locations on the surface of the Earth. Little if any of the current information has been geo-referenced onto a map. Google Earth This program can view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, and real/virtual locations such as landscape terrain or locations of fossils within forest or cities.

Project Results Data protocol I will develop a protocol that links data from Specify to a GIS map and Google Earth, I will also link related specimen data to each fossils locations, Pleistocene map (GIS) I will incorporate a fossil database and geological maps to construct a GIS map of the exact location of each fossil. Also, I will create an ArcGIS interface to allow the spatial display of a multi-theme geological map of Orange County and Pleistocene fossil locations.