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What Is The Purpose Of The Precambrian And Phanerozoic Eras?

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Purpose of the Website and Map: The purpose of this website is to catalog articles, documents, and dissertation published by the faculty of the UMN. This site has official, reviewed data collected by professionals in their area of expertise which makes it a reliable source of information. Even though the website is open to the public, much of the language used in the papers is highly academic and technical which would be more suited to an advanced audience or fellow researchers in the field. The map shows the bedrock distribution and type throughout the state, specifically focusing on the Precambrian and Phanerozoic eras. Some of the data is inferred from previous maps with the inclusion of newly discovered types that are indicated as …show more content…

Slight variances in design cause confusion such as the fault vs. geologic contact lines, surely they aren’t the same? Overall, the map could be improved visually by focusing on one family of rock or including multiple maps in a series. The Grid: This map includes a simplified version of a topographic map underneath. Unfortunately, it's hard to see in some areas that have multiple layers of color/symbols on top which defeats the purpose. The submap is highly detailed even though it’s not the main focus which can be distracting. A more straightforward way to show which counties/towns have what bedrock would be to make the names stand out more on the map. The legend partially solves this by including the location of the rocks in their description, but this doesn’t help if the location is completely obscured on the map’s body. Typography: Generally speaking, this map has acceptable typography. The words are properly centered and reflect the topic at hand. One issue with the text is the sheer amount of it, especially in the legend. While descriptions of the bedrock types are useful, it would be visually neater if they were shortened. It would also be helpful if some text was made larger such as the text in the legend and scale. A possible solution to this is to separate it into chunks by making a border around all similar information. This makes it less cluttered looking

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