COVID-19 as an opportunity to make field-based earth sciences and other similar courses easily accessible and affordable

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the need to have virtual field libraries accessible to users, which is possible if the field data are collected, archived, and processed to retain the actual field configurations. Therefore, we demonstrate the veracity of geological mapping with the help of Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) coupled with the traditional field site visits in Brunei Darussalam, SE Asia. We have selected two geological field sites that expose faulted Miocene sedimentary rocks. We visited these sites with geology undergraduates to teach them the field components of the courses on Field Mapping and Structural Geology at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam. A field assignment was given to students, which had to be submitted at the end of the fieldwork. The same exercise was repeated in the classroom with the UAV aided field data as virtual field exercises. The geological outcrop details were captured at kilometer and millimeter (mm) scales with both the static and dynamic mode of operations. The drone-based imagery was used to generate the 3D point clouds that used 67 oriented photographs to recreate the outcrop details. We discovered that both the traditional and drone based field data are highly useful to capture kilometer to mm scale details. Our results also revealed that students were very engaged during the virtual field exercises, and completed the field assignment with care, which was largely missing during the onsite field exercises. We think this is partly because of the relaxed state of the mind to grasp details while in a classroom environment where the hot sunny and humid weather of tropical Brunei was avoidable. The virtual field exercises have opened a new arena of field geology where the use of technology enhances the usability and accessibility of field based courses that are often disrupted because of various reasons. However, the traditional field visits should not be completely replaced by the virtual field.