Macrostrat has emerged as the go-to resource for digital geological map and geologic column data.
There are two main reasons for this:
- Macrostrat currently contains voluminous geologic map and column data that
cannot be accessed in aggregate anywhere else.
- Over 300 different geologic maps, containing more than 2.5 million rock unit polygons covering the world, have been integrated into a single, unified, queryable environment in Macrostrat.
- Additionally, more than 35,000 rock units from over 1,500 regional columns covering all of North America and limited other regions are publicly available.
- Macrostrat has a public "REST" application programming interface (API) that makes the full complement of data available in Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) fashion with a CC-BY license.
Many third-party applications and users take advantage of Macrostrat data services:
- Mancos
- StraboSpot
- Flyover Country
- MinDat
- The iNaturalist web and mobile applications
- A California Academy of Sciences interactive museum kiosk
- Local geological surveys and individual scientists.
Usage
Macrostrat’s data services have become impactful community resources for geologic information:
- Our geologic map server has served more than 2 billion tile requests since logging began in 2018 (~10 per second)
- Over the last 28 days, our other data APIs have served 3.8 million requests (~2 per second).
- Conservatively, these amount to 100,000 requests for information each day.
