Behind this text a computed desert terrain renders live: banded sedimentary strata in ochre and bone, cut by a dry wash, descending from pale morning haze through raking afternoon light into a dark slate dusk as the page scrolls.
Strata Geological Survey · Green River, Utah · est. 2011
The ground remembers.
We take its deposition. Strata reads landscapes for planners, filmmakers, and courts: on foot, in section, on the record. Scroll to descend through the three epochs of a survey.
N 38°59′24″ · W 110°09′36″ · Datum: memory
Epoch I — for planners0–40 m
Overburden
Everything you intend to build stands on something that arrived first. Overburden is the unconsolidated recent: till, alluvium, the paperwork of the last ice age. We map it before foundations are drawn. Seventeen county road readings. Four reservoir sitings. One hospital that stands forty meters east of its first drawing, because we found the old river still moving under the site. The county thanked us in writing. The river never noticed us.
Sample 11-C · till, unsorted · auger refusal at 9.4 m
Epoch II — for filmmakers40–320 m
Marker Bed
A marker bed is a stratum so distinct the whole basin agrees on it, a line you can follow for thirty miles without losing the argument. Directors come asking for a red wall at dawn. We answer with beds by name: Entrada, three kilometers of it, faces east, blushes at 6:41 in October. The shot list went out annotated by stratum. The light did the rest. It generally does.
Plate 14 · Entrada bench, east face · golden hour 22 min
Epoch III — for courtsbelow 320 m
Basement
Beneath every argument sits basement rock: what happened, in what order, under oath. Courts want what the ground can swear to. We have testified on subsidence above a 1971 room-and-pillar mine, on a section corner that moved with a river in 1968, and on the difference between a landslide and someone’s grading permit. The rock’s memory is admissible. We are merely its interpreters, sworn and punctual.
Exhibit 9 · core 41-B, boxed · chain of custody unbroken
Selected findings
From the survey log, 2021–2025 · full dockets on request
- 2025 San Rafael Swell, Utah Film Location science for a limited series: forty-one outcrops scouted, nine annotated by bed, one canyon declined on account of nesting raptors.
- 2024 Carbon County, Utah Plan Slope reading for a road realignment. Found the wet Mancos seam three earlier reports had stepped over. The road moved sixty meters; the hill stayed.
- 2023 District Court, Denver Court Testimony on subsidence above a 1971 room-and-pillar working. The settlement followed our survey line to the meter.
- 2022 Emery County, Utah Plan Reservoir siting. We advised against both candidate basins, and were thanked for it one wet spring later.
- 2021 Green River, Utah Plan Flood-terrace chronology for the town plan: four terraces, four thousand years, delivered on one page.
The principals
Three people, two trucks, one plotter · every principal signs with a column
-
Dr. Ilse Marek
Principal · Stratigraphy
Twelve seasons on the Book Cliffs, testimony in three states. Draws every contact freehand, then checks it against the archive twice.
-
Ruben Ochoa
Field director
Carries the radar and the good pencils. Knows the name of the dog at every ranch gate between Price and Hanksville.
-
June Hargrove
Cartography & archive
Keeps the plotter, the seals, and the 1911 plat books. Answers letters in ink, delivers sections in vector.
Contact
Send us your ground.
The 2026 field season holds room for two more surveys. Write with a place, a question, and any date the ground should know about. Counsel may ask for the litigation packet. We answer within one geological instant, which is to say three working days.
survey@strata.landField office · 214 Long Street · Green River, Utah 84525
Plates and dockets by appointment
Standing section · left open at dusk · 740 m and holding