2024 GMAP Planetary Geologic Mapping Winter School

General information

The GMAP Winter School is focused on the production of planetary geological maps of a range of Solar System bodies: building upon earlier editions targeting Mars, the Moon, and Mercury, the 2024 edition will cover exemplary geologic mapping aspects on Venus, Icy Satellites and Small Bodies.

The 2024 edition of the Winter School will be largely hands-on, with the inclusion of seminars and time for asynchronous interaction and individual/project mapping work. Topics covered include: Basemap resources, QGIS project creation, and map crafting hands-on.

The school will run synchronously in the week 22-26 January 2024, and asynchronously on the Streavent platform for the following month (February 2024). As customary, materials will be freely available after the school, for interested parties, to perform self-learning at their pace.

Each body of interest will be introduced, hands-on activities will be described, and participants will be guided through the task, i.e. individual completion of a small mapping area. At the end of each day, specific time slots are dedicated to seminars, which will provide insights, perspectives and additional knowledge on related topics.

After the synchronous and asynchronous phases of the School, no dedicated support will be provided, but any interested party is welcome to participate to the monthly GMAP calls, as well as to join the GMAP Discord server for discussion and support (if interested, please reach out to info@planetarymapping.eu).

Cartography & tools

Basics on planetary cartography and digital mapping will be provided, including an introduction to community- (QGIS) and GMAP-developed mapping aids (Mappy, OpenCraterTool), providing background required for following activities.

Venus

Venus' geology is going to be introduced, as well as the geologic context of the mapping area of choice. An initial description of the specifics of SAR-based remote sensing and mapping will be part of the activity, as well as base map gathering directions.

Vesta

Data collected by the NASA/Dawn spacecraft over Vesta and Ceres will be introduced, and exemplary existing systematic mapping products. The mapping area for the hands-on and task will be presented.

Ganymede

The overall geology of Jupiter's icy satellites is presented, with a specific focus on surface shaping processes, such as tectonics and cryovolcanism as well as on exploration missions, instruments and data repositories for mapping. A mapping hands-on on the surface of Ganymede is foreseen with particular attention to structural mapping.

Comet 67p & Phobos

The specific challenges of mapping irregular bodies will be described, and the 67P comet imaged by ESA/NASA Rosetta experiements will be introduced. A specific demo/hands-on using VRGS over irregular bodies will be provided.

Data & software downloads

Required data downloads, and required software installations are described on the

Downloads page.

The companion GitHub repository is reachable at:

https://github.com/europlanet-gmap/winter-school-2024

Mapping task completion & certificate

In order to receice a certificate, participants should upload an individually crafted mapping proudct for each of the mapping areas on:

Vesta - see instructions and requirements
Venus - see instructions and requirements
Ganymede - see instructions and requirements

Maps should be in .pdf, .jpg, or .pdf format, with a reasonable resolution, and individual file sizes of less than 2 Mb (i.e. max 6 Mb).

The extended deadline for providing mapping products is March 8th 2024. Instructions on how to upload are going to be provided via email to participants, as well as communicated during the school.

Certificates will be delivered via email by mid April 2024.

Code of conduit

During the entire school phases, both synchronous and asynchronous, no offensive, racist or sexist language will be tolerated, and will result in banning.
If any participant feels uncomfortable with the interaction with any of the channels or users, it will be possible to reach out to the admins at info@planetarymapping.eu, or dedicated contacts communicated at the beginning of the school.
Please refer to Section 2 of the Europlanet Research Infrastructure Code of Conduct - https://www.europlanet-society.org/europlanet-2024-ri/europlanet-2024-research-infrastructure-ri-code-of-conduct/