Building a virtual outcrop, extracting geological information from it, and sharing the results in Google Earth via OpenPlot and Photoscan: An example from the Khaviz Anticline (Iran)

The aim of this paper is to present methodologies involved in the creation, analysis and sharing of low-cost easily-built virtual outcrops, which can be extensively used for the introduction to the 3D geology. An example from the Khaviz Anticline (Iran) is used to create a 3D digital model from a set of non-oriented images, using Agisoft Photoscan photogrammetry software. The obtained geopositioned model is then imported into OpenPlot, from which geological surfaces can be extracted. These data, together with the 3D model, can be later exported in Google Earth format.