Teaching Geomorphology in the 21st Century

Jump down to Tools for Teaching | Field Trip Safety | River Geomorphology Videos | USGS Pub on Geomorph Terms | Module on Geochemical Instrumentation & Analysis | Geochemical Analytical Equipment Database | Geophysical Instrument Registry | 2008 Workshop for Faculty | Join the Discussion

Tools for Teaching

• An growing online collection of activities and assignments, contains a variety of examples of field, lab, classroom, homework, and GIS activities for teaching geomorphology. We hope that you will contribute your activities/assignments to the collection.
• An online collection of syllabi for undergraduate courses, including those in geomorphology. We hope that you will contribute your syllabus to the collection.

Field trip guides and databases

• The Montana-Yellowstone Geologic Field Guide Database - The Montana-Yellowstone Geologic Field Guide Database is a pilot project for making the field guide literature more accessible and useful to geoscience educators, students, and researchers. While the database is not an exhaustive listing of every published field guide, nor does it provide direct links to the full text of each reference (except for a few unpublished field guides which are reproduced as pdf files), the database is a fully-searchable listing of 50 of the best references for exploring the geology of this fascinating region.
• NAGT's Pacific Northwest Section Field Trip Guidebooks
• NAGT's Far West Section Publications
• Field Guides - Illustrated field guides for sites near Bozeman and Big Sky, MT.
• Geologic Guidebooks of North America Database : This database from AGI and the Geoscience Information Society contains bibliographic references and location for published field guides.
• The University of Texas at Austin has compiled a substantial e-library of field trip guides (more info) on their Walter Geology Library website.

Field Trip Safety

Our field trip safety site provides links to a variety of field safety resources, including sample field trip policy forms (one of which is patterned after the OSHA health and safety forms used by consulting firms), a short rationale for adopting policies to address the issue of the risks inherent in taking students into the field, and links to other resources on field trip safety.

River Geomorphology Videos

The folks at Little River Research and Design have put together a number of videos showing different geomorphic processes at work in river systems. They have made these videos available for use in the classroom along with short descriptions of what processes are occurring in the video and suggestions for how to use them in the classroom.

New USGS Publication on Geomorphic Terms

The USGS has just announced a new downloadable publication on geomorphic terms:

Osterkamp, W.R., 2008, Annotated definitions of selected geomorphic terms and related terms of hydrology, sedimentology, soil science, and ecology: U. S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 2008-1217, 49 p.

Module on Geochemical Instrumentation and Analysis

This module provides an on-line tutorial of the analytical techniques commonly used to characterize geological materials. The goal is to help novices (such as students or scientists working out of their field) to gain an understanding of mineralogical, petrological and geochemical analytical techniques. This module covers X-ray crystallography, electron microbeam, elemental analysis, mass spectrometers and more. See the entire list of techniques covered on this site.

Data Base of Geochemical Analytical Equipment

Our Analytical Instrument Database provides a browseable list of institutions who are willing to provide access to their analytical instrumentation for researchers, lab managers, instructors and students looking to gain access to analytical instruments such as SEM, electron microbeam, x-ray diffraction, x-ray fluorescence and more. The data base provides contact and terms-of-use policies. You can also add your equipment to the data base.

Geophysical Instrument Registry

Out Geophysical Instrument Registry is a directory of geophysical instruments available for use on research projects or for student work. You can add your instrument to the registry, or search for instruments.

2008 Workshop for Faculty

A workshop for teaching geomorphology in the 21st Century, was held July 28-August 1, 2008. The workshop took place at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. The workshop program contains links to all workshop presentations. The photo at right shows the happy participants and the courses and activities that they submitted to the collection.

Join the Discussion

Join our geomorphology email list. Share insights, ask questions, or network with other faculty. The link above will also provide access for list members to the email list archives and allow you to unsubscribe.