After a successful collaboration with Sweden, our Geo3D viewer invites you to North America. This time we are going to southern Ontario, Canada – in cooperation with the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), we are providing an interactive, hydrostratigraphic 3D model of this region.

The 3D model of Southern Ontario shows 13 hydrostratigraphic units located over an area of 67,000 km2. It is based on a detailed lithostratigraphic model that includes a 1,500-metre profile of 53 layers of the older Palaeozoic, lying on Precambrian crystalline bedrock.

Hydrostratigraphic 3D model of southern Ontario

The presentation of the model in the Geo3D browser of the Polish Geological Institute – National Research Institute is, according to its authors (Carter et al. 2021), the best way to present the geological structure and additional data. Information on individual hydrostratigraphic units is available by clicking on annotations and a set of more than 5,000 boreholes deeper than 500 metres. The boreholes here include basic location information and a link to a borehole database offering more details.

We are inviting to explore the geological structure of southern Ontario in Geo3D by drilling virtual boreholes, plotting geological cross-sections and horizontal shear maps, and uplifting individual layers or their entire complexes. The top and bottom surfaces of the strata can be hypsometrically coloured here and the stratohypse can be displayed on them in the selected cut. The geological situation and openings can be precisely located on the Open Street Map topographic map, which can be ‘overlaid’ on the model with adjusted transparency.

The model is available at: https://geo3d.pgi.gov.pl/Ontario/index.html

Similar 3D geological models from Poland and around the world are available on the main Geo3D website https://geo3d.pgi.gov.pl/

We hope that other works will soon appear there. Please submit models for publication to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Text: Zbigniew Małolepszy and Dominik Szrek