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Land use planning, resource evaluation, groundwater issues, and geologic hazards all require comprehensive understanding of geology. Mapping of earth materials, features, and structures is not done in Vermont by remote sensing. Mapping is done on foot and we seek to collect as much data as possible in our limited field season. We are very grateful to the many Vermont landowners who annually allow us on their land to investigate Vermont geology.

The New Bedrock Geologic Map of Vermont

Vermont Geological Survey (VGS) directed by Laurence Becker at the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), University of Vermont geologists and students, and geologists affiliated with other New England colleges have participated since the early 1980's in a cooperative venture to produce the new bedrock geological map of Vermont at a scale of 1:100,000.
The bedrock map (in press), the first complete map since 1961, will make available to the public a geological map based on work which incorporates the understanding of plate tectonic theory.
Authors of the map are Nicholas Ratcliffe (USGS), Rolfe Stanley (UVM, posthumous), Marjorie H. Gale (VGS), Peter Thompson (UNH) and Gregory Walsh (USGS) with contributions by Norman Hatch (USGS), Douglas Rankin (USGS), Barry Doolan (UVM), Jonathan Kim (VGS), Charlotte Mehrtens (UVM), John Aleinikoff (USGS) and J. Gregory McHone. The map incorporates detailed field studies conducted over 25 years by more than 60 geologists, including many who were students of Doolan, Stanley and Mehrtens at UVM. We presented the map at The New Bedrock Geologic Map of Vermont: New Answers, New Problems, and New Uses of Bedrock Geologic Data, a symposium at NE/SE GSA in March 2010 and anticipate publication in 2011with release in the spring of 2012. To see the evolution of the map, please click here.

Mapping completed, Summer, 2011: Plainfield Quadrangle

1.) Kim, J., and Ruksznis, A., 2011, Bedrock Geologic Map of the Plainfield Quadrangle, Washington County, Vermont, Structure Data-Plate 2 : Vermont Geological Survey Open File Report VG11-3, scale 1:24,000

2.) Springston, G., 2011, Surficial Geologic Map of the Plainfield Quadrangle ( final draft in progress)