Marine Oxygen Isotopes and Changes in Global Ice Volume
Summary
Students explore marine oxygen-isotope data from cores collected by the Ocean Drilling Program. The activity gives students access to real paleoclimate data, develops their skills in organizing and graphing data, and provides an opportunity for students to discover trends in a time series pertaining to long-term ice volume changes.
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Context
Audience
The activity is used an introductory geology course for non-science majors. Course is entitled "The Geology of Climate Change and Energy."
Skills and concepts that students must have mastered
The students complete a brief pre-lab exercise (available with this exercise) that uses on-line resources to learn about the Ocean Drilling Program and fundamental concepts pertaining to oxygen isotopes.
How the activity is situated in the course
Part of a sequence of exercises that explore paleoclimate records of the Quaternary Period.
Goals
Content/concepts goals for this activity
Explore marine oxygen isotope records for the past 2 million years.
Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity
Students build data plots in MS Excel to facilitate graphical analysis. Students interpret trends in the data to understand the sawtooth-shape of the marine-oxygen isotope time series.
Other skills goals for this activity
Other skills goals include exploring the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program website (at least the information relevant to the Ocean Drilling Program), working in groups, and plotting data in MS Excel.
Description of the activity/assignment
Students explore paleoclimate of the Quaternary Period by working with marine oxygen-isotope data from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) core 677.
Determining whether students have met the goals
Students work with data from ODP677 in an Excel spreadsheet, and submit their spreadsheet electronically at the end of the exercise. Students also verify their answers with the instructor and T.A. in class, and are finally evaluated by taking a five question quiz based on the lab exercise.
More information about assessment tools and techniques.Teaching materials and tips
- Solution Set (Microsoft Word 60kB Oct17 10)
Student handout (Microsoft Word 57kB Oct25 10)
Pre-lab activity (Microsoft Word 52kB Oct27 10)
Excel spreadsheet (Excel 69kB Oct27 10)
Source data from Shackleton et al. (Text File 236kB Oct27 10)
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Other Materials
Supporting references/URLs
NOAA Paleoclimatology Program website
The data used in this exercise were first published by:
Shackleton, N.J., A. Berger, and W.R. Peltier. 1990. An alternative astronomical calibration of the lower Pleistocene timescale based on ODP Site 677. Transactions
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences 81:251.
The data used in this exercise were first published by:
Shackleton, N.J., A. Berger, and W.R. Peltier. 1990. An alternative astronomical calibration of the lower Pleistocene timescale based on ODP Site 677. Transactions
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences 81:251.