An open access, collaborative initiative to compile info on active faults in Himalaya, Andes

I came across this great initiative after Richard Styron sent the announcement via the Geotectonics mailing list. He’s currently maintaining these projects. The idea is to compile all available data on active structures in the Himalaya using the GitHub infrastructure (basically a collaborative platform for programming) . Everyone can join and help compiling active faults in this region. The data is then available to everyone for free in different data formats. The same thing is currently happening for the Andes region, too!

Read the blog of Richard Styron to find out more: http://rocksandwater.net/

The project start page with the different data formats

It’s relatively easy to start, most data formats are self-explaining and it is no big job to add information once the document is set up and the first entries are made. As a result you can create fault maps like this:

This GoogleEarth example shows normal and thrust faults mapped in the Himalaya region (red lines)

This is an amazing idea and may be seen as a pilot for more crowd-based mapping projects. Plus, it’s also great for teaching purposes.

[When I first tried to get the Himalaya date as kml-files by right-click–>save target as… I encountered a problem trying to open the file with GoogleEarth. Then, just copy the code, paste in the editor and save the file as a *.kml and it works without any problems.]

The Himalaya-Tibet Map: https://github.com/HimaTibetMap/HimaTibetMap

The Andes Map: https://github.com/ActiveTectonicsAndes/ATA

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