Online Discussion Prompts for Introductory Geology
Karen Kortz, Community College of Rhode Island; Jessica Smay, San Jose City College
This set of 17 online discussion prompts are designed to encourage students to apply, explore, and reflect on course topics. Some are content-specific (e.g. investigate misconceptions about a certain topic or take ...

Topographic differencing: Earthquake along the Wasatch fault
Chelsea Scott, Arizona State University Campus Immersion
After a big earthquake happens people ask, 'Where did the earthquake occur? How big was it? What type of fault was activated?' We designed an undergraduate laboratory exercise in which students learn how ...

Lesson 3: The Value of a Water Footprint (High School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
Session 1 of this lesson begins with a quick activity to get students thinking about their direct and virtual water use. It introduces a few new ideas for virtual water use that may surprise students, including the ...

OGGM-Edu Glaciology Lab 1: What Makes a Glacier?
Lizz Ultee, Middlebury College; Fabien Maussion, University of Innsbruck
This is a three-part class or lab activity that challenges students to define what a glacier is, how it differs from other parts of the cryosphere (such as sea ice), and what kinds of glaciers there are in the ...

Detecting Cascadia's changing shape with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium; David Thesenga, Alexander Dawson School
Research-grade Global Positioning Systems (GPS) allow students to deduce that Earth's crust is changing shape in measurable ways. From data gathered by EarthScope's Plate Boundary Observatory, students discover that the Pacific Northwest of the United States and coastal British Columbia — the Cascadia region - are geologically active: tectonic plates move and collide; they shift and buckle; continental crust deforms; regions warp; rocks crumple, bend, and will break.

Converging Tectonic Plates Demonstration
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
During this demo, participants use springs and a map of the Pacific Northwest with GPS vectors to investigate the stresses and surface expression of subduction zones, specifically the Juan de Fuca plate diving beneath the North American plate.

Nutrient Monitoring in the Chesapeake Bay
Akinyele Oni, Morgan State University; Niangoran Koissi, Morgan State University
The Chesapeake Bay waters receive input from rivers and streams from areas of Washington D.C, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, and some parts of New York and Pennsylvania. Historically, humongous ...

Paleoclimate and Ocean Biogeochemistry
Allison Jacobel, Middlebury College
This module guides students through an examination of how surface ocean productivity relates to global climate on glacial-interglacial timescales and how the availability of ocean nutrients can be correlated with ...

Cross-Scale Interactions
Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia
Environmental phenomena are often driven by multiple factors that interact across different spatial and temporal scales. In freshwater lakes and reservoirs worldwide, phytoplankton blooms are increasing in ...

Teleconnections
Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia; Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Ecosystems can be influenced by teleconnections, in which meteorological, societal, and/or ecological phenomenon link remote regions via cause and effect relationships. Because it is difficult to predict how ...