Alaska GPS Analysis of Plate Tectonics and Earthquakes

,Learners should be familiar with plate tectonics and earthquakes. The instructor should definitely give a brief introduction to GPS systems at the start of the activity if the students are not already familiar.

This activity would probably be best midway or late in a unit on plate tectonics and earthquakes or geoscience and hazards.

Students will be able to:

• Diagram and describe the basic components of the GPS system and a GPS station
• Construct a small model GPS station
• Interpret high precision GPS data

• Calculate tectonic velocities from GPS time series data and graph resulting vectors
• Synthesize results from three GPS stations to determine the implications for future earthquakes in south central Alaska.

Overall this activity has five sections. The first two are relatively faster hands-on demonstration activities to introduce learners to GPS. The next three steps learners through measuring, plotting, and interpreting GPS data.

1. Building a GPS 'Station'
2. Pinpointing a Location with GPS
3. Measuring Alaska GPS/Tectonic Movement
4. Plotting GPS Station Motion
5. Analysis of GPS Station Motion

Teaching Materials

• Alaska-GPS Instructor Guide (Acrobat (PDF) 1.5MB Sep15 22) - educator notes, NGSS alignment, and links to supporting resources
• Alaska-GPS Student Activity (Acrobat (PDF) 2.6MB May28 20) WORD version (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 6.2MB May28 20)
• Alaska GPS Activity Key -- educator-only file
  Hide
  Alaska GPS Activity Key

  
  This file is only accessible to verified educators. If you are a teacher or faculty member and would like access to this file please enter your email address to be verified as belonging to an educator.

  Email Adress Submit

• Alaska-GPS presentation (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 16.4MB May28 20) - optional presentation that includes background information on GPS as well as slides that might help with a discussion about the activity during/afterwards (excerpt from Alaska Earthquakes & Tsunami Presentation)

×

Activity page 1 preview

Provenance: Robert Butler (University of Portland)
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

• See also the Instructor Notes document above.
• If an instructor wishes to shorten the exercise and concentrate just on the vector and math portions of the exercise, the first two sections could be skipped and just replaced (if needed) with a brief introduction to what GPS is.
• If instructors wish to update the data in the activity, they can download it from the GPS station pages.
  Access Data from Your Closest GPS station (Acrobat (PDF) 2.1MB Oct28 22) - 1-page document that walks through how to access GPS data from any of the stations in the Network of the Americas (NOTA). Stations used in this activity are:
  • AC79 Montague Island
  • AC20 Girdwood
  • AC32 Mt Susitna

Formative assessment of student understanding can be gathered from classroom observation and discussions with individuals or small groups.

The student exercise serves as the summative assessment for the activity. Some questions have clearly correct answers. Teachers can develop a simple grading scheme for open ended questions such as:

• 2 points for thorough and correct answer
• 1 point for partially correct
• 0 zero for incorrect

• ANGLE presentations on this topic from which instructors could draw background information if needed are:
  • Alaska Plate Tectonics & Geohazards Presentation
  • Alaska Earthquakes & Tsunami Presentation
• Animations related to GPS and Alaska plate tectonics and earthquakes
  • Alaska: Tectonics and Earthquakes
  • Alaska: The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964
  • What can GPS tell us about future earthquakes?
  • Measuring Plate Tectonic Motions with GPS
• Videos on teaching about GPS
  • How Does GPS Work?
  • GPS monitors deformation in subduction zone: Part A intro
  • GPS monitors deformation in subduction zone: Part B, using real data
  • How GPS Works to Pinpoint Location
• GPS Velocity Viewer allows viewers to explore GPS motions around the world, including in Alaska.
• Tectonics Motions of Alaska poster (search the page for "Alaska" to find it lower on the page)
• The activity was presented as part of the EarthScope ANGLE Educator Workshops.
• This activity is part of ANGLE Curricular Pathway 1: Instrumentation.
• Contact ANGLE with questions or comments.