Visualizing Relationships with Data: Exploring plate boundaries with Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and GPS Data in the Western U.S. & Alaska | Lessons on Plate Tectonics

Roger Groom (Mt. Tabor Middle School), Cate Fox-Lent (UNAVCO), Shelley Olds (UNAVCO), and Nancy West (Quarter Dome Consulting)

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This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection

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This page first made public: Feb 27, 2022

Summary

Learners use the UNAVCO GPS Velocity Viewer, or the included map packet to visualize relationships between earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate boundaries as a jigsaw activity.

Show more information on NGSS alignment

Geodesy, Tectonics, Geoscience, Earthquakes, Natural Hazards | Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)

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Context

Audience

This activity was developed for middle school and high school students, grades 6 - 12. However, its focus on data makes it adaptable for introductory college courses. It's expected that this lesson will take one class session (45 - 55 minutes) or be given as homework.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Students should be familiar with using the internet.

How the activity is situated in the course

This activity can be used at any time in an earth science class. However, in the sequence of lessons about plate tectonics, it is an optional activity to use data to learn about plate tectonics.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

Students will be able to:

Describe how the locations of earthquakes, volcanoes, and velocity vectors from GPS stations inform us about plate boundary zones
Describe and draw a velocity vector
Describe the difference between a plate boundary and plate boundary zone

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

Analyze regional plate motion.
Interpret crustal deformation based on velocity vector map.

Other skills goals for this activity

Not Applicable

Description and Teaching Materials

I This activity consists of four parts:

Preparing the online map for study
Compare and analyze earthquake and volcano locations
Analyze regional crustal motions using GPS Vector Data
Put it all together to interpret plate motions and boundary types

Lesson Resources

Student and teacher files are available as both PDF and docx formats. The zip files below contain both formats.

Materials for the Western United States

Western US Student Worksheet (Acrobat (PDF) 791kB Feb25 22) OR Western US Student Worksheet (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 660kB Feb25 22)
Western US Maps - Blank (Acrobat (PDF) 125kB Jan15 22) OR Western US Maps - Blank (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 311kB Jan15 22)
To be used with paper-based instruction: Western US Maps (Acrobat (PDF) 1.6MB Oct17 21) OR Western US Maps (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 311kB Jan15 22)

Materials for Alaska

Alaska Student Worksheet (Acrobat (PDF) 2MB Feb26 22) OR Alaska Student Worksheet (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 1.7MB Feb26 22)
Alaska Map - Blank (Acrobat (PDF) 1.8MB Jan15 22)

Supporting Presentation: Visualizing Relationships with Data: Exploring plate boundaries with Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and GPS Data for the two portions of this lesson (in both PDF and PowerPoint formats) are also available. Both give background on determining and visualizing relationships between earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate tectonics for a specific area — the Western United States or Alaska. The pptx is fairly extensive. Edit as works best for your learners.

Western United States: Western US Presentation (Acrobat (PDF) 5.1MB Feb28 22) OR Western US Presentation (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 10.1MB Feb28 22)
Alaska: Alaska Presentation (Acrobat (PDF) 5.1MB Feb28 22) OR Alaska Presentation (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 9.7MB Feb28 22)