The Earth Sciences and Map Library will be open for Intersession hours from Monday, December 22. 2008, through Monday, January 19, 2009. Intersession hours are:

Additionally, the library will be closed between December 24, 2008 and January 4, 2009 for the Winter Holiday. Intersession hours will resume on Monday, January 5, 2008. Have a great break!

Map of Rancho San Ramon (Carpentier), Contra Costa County, 183-?

During the Spanish colonization of California, three main types of land claims were made by the Spanish crown: missions (for religious use), presidios (for military use), and pueblos (for civilian use). Land outside of these jurisdictions was granted to individuals by the Spanish and eventually, Mexican governments. These individual land grants were known as ranchos in California.

While ranchos are sometimes overlooked during this period in California history, they provide an interesting view of the changes that took place in California during the early 19th century. The Earth Sciences and Map Library, Bancroft Library, The Online Archive of California, and Calisphere all have a wealth of resources that pertain to the ranchos.

The Bancroft Library holds the U.S. District Court's (San Francisco) collection of land grant maps which were used in the Court's Land Case decisions. While access to the original maps is restricted, they are all digitized and available online.

The Earth Sciences & Map Library's collection contains many reproductions of these manuscript maps, as well as other rancho maps not involved in the land case court decisions. More information about the ranchos can be found in the online document "Ranchos of California."

Calisphere has 10 texts and over 300 images related to the California ranchos available for use online.

The United States Bureau of Reclamation has made a broad range of data concerning dams around the United States available online. Project Dataweb is a source for data and information regarding activities related to the Bureau's projects, facilities. The site contains information and data about projects, power plants, and dams. Other resources include interactive maps with facilities listed by state, congressional district, and watershed. A search tool is also available for Project Dataweb. Users can search for a specific location or characteristic (e.g. gravity dams).

From the site's FAQ: "Project Dataweb is the new and greatly expanded version of the 1979 Project Databook. We have Project Databook 1979 information for each project online. The project narratives provide basic facility information, with links to reservoir data, engineering data, and other more specific information. Facilities such as embankment, concrete, and diversion dams have their own pages with expanded information. Many of the projects have online histories from D-5300, the historians in the Technical Service Center. We have been updating each project description by consulting a variety of sources."

SFenvironment.org, a department within the City of San Francisco, along with CH2MHill, has created a solar power map of San Francisco.

The San Francisco Solar Map identifies and gives information about current solar installations within the city of San Francisco. Users can find information about each installation on the map as well as view photos of selected installations. Users can also search by address to find the potential for solar power at a specific location. This search includes a brief cost estimate for solar power installation as well.

Additionally, the San Francisco Solar Map provides: "information about San Francisco's solar program, including information about the total number of solar systems currently installed in the City, how much energy these systems are producing, how much money San Franciscans are saving on their utility bills as a result, and how much CO2 is being offset by these installations."

The Great Southern California ShakeOut, a week of special events that featured the largest earthquake drill in U.S. history, took place in Southern California beginning November 13. The earthquake drill was based on a magnitude 7.8 scenario earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in southern California.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has made a wide range of images, shakemaps, detailed perspective view animations of seismic radiation available online. Imagery includes a set of ShakeOut scenario aftershocks. Videos of the intensity of ground motion within Shakeout scenario are available for 15 locations in Southern California including the Los Angeles area.

The movies are available as QuickTime files in three different resolutions. The images and movies are in the public domain and may be used freely. Please credit the U.S Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center.