Cordilleran Terrane Polygons and Fault Maps of Northwestern North America

Northwestern North America's Cordilleran orogen is represented as a collage of terranes derived from a GIS compilation. The digital maps include terrane polygons and selected major Late Cretaceous and Tertiary strike-slip faults, presented in formats like ArcGIS geodatabase, shapefiles, and KMZ. Polygons are accurate to approximately 1 kilometer for Yukon and British Columbia and 5 kilometers for Alaska.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial relationships between terrane polygons and Late Cretaceous/Tertiary strike-slip faults for tectonic modeling.
• Integrate terrane polygon data with detailed geological maps from BCGC, USGS, and YGS for regional resource assessment.
• Visualize the terrane collage framework in Google Earth using the provided KMZ files for educational or presentation purposes.

Strengths

• Polygon spatial accuracy is specified as ~1 km for Yukon and BC and ~5 km for Alaska.
• Data is derived from a peer-reviewed GIS compilation first published in 2007 and revised in 2013.
• Maps are provided in multiple standard geospatial formats including ArcGIS geodatabase, shapefiles, and KMZ.

Limitations

• Maps are intended for page-size display at scales of ~1:5,000,000 and smaller, limiting use for high-resolution analysis.
• The dataset does not include the detailed attribute tables or descriptions of terranes referenced in the accompanying publications.
• Sample data and specific row/column counts for the GIS features are unavailable in the provided description.

Provenance

Source

Collaborative project of the BC Geological Survey and the Yukon Geological Survey, distributed via GeoYukon.

Collection Method

GIS compilation based on maps published by Colpron et al. (2007) and revised by Nelson et al. (2013).

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Northern Cordillera (Alaska, Yukon, British Columbia) and Canadian Cordillera (BC and Yukon).