Observing, describing and measuring landscape attributes

• give students an opportunity to pose some of the basic questions about how and why landforms are created

• challenge students to develop a hypothesis for how they might explain one of the landscape patterns they observe.

• develop students' "eye" for seeing patterns in the landscap
• develop students' ability to describe clearly what they see

Students work in groups, examining three different representations of earth surface topography: a raised relief map, a topographic map, and stereo pairs of aerial photographs. The class comes together three times during the lab to report on each group's progress and results.

This lab is intended to both clarify and build on students' previous ways of seeing the landscape, and also give them a chance to view the landscape with fresh eyes. One important element of this exercise is to practice separating observation from interpretation. Ideally, observations are objective facts, things other people would see if they followed the same procedure as you did. Interpretations are all the names, explanations and stories we develop as we attempt to make sense of our observations.