Topographic differencing: Earthquake along the Wasatch fault
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 ...

Unit 3: What's in YOUR watershed?
In this unit, students investigate water resources of their own area or another area of personal interest, which typically gets them very excited. They apply their knowledge from Units 1 and 2 to identify the water ...

Unit 1: Monitoring Volcanic Activity at Mount St. Helens
How can data from an impending volcanic dome-building event be used to forecast the hazard to a surrounding community? In this activity, students will examine geodetic data (GPS and lidar) and seismic data in a ...

Converging Tectonic Plates Demonstration
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.

Unit 2: Earthquakes, GPS, and Plate Movement
GPS data can measure bedrock motion in response to deformation of the ground near plate boundaries because of plate tectonics. In this module, students will learn how to read GPS data to interpret how the bedrock ...

Unit 4: Measuring Ice Mass Changes: Vertical Bedrock GPS
This unit shows how GPS records of bedrock surface elevation may be used to monitor snow and ice loading/unloading on decadal and annual time scales. Students calculate secular trends in the GPS time series and ...

Unit 1: Introduction to Flooding
Do geoscientists understand the meaning of floods and their role within the broader context of ecological and societal impacts? In this unit, students are introduced to the concept of flooding and the mechanisms ...

Visualizing Relationships with Data: Exploring plate boundaries with Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and GPS Data in the Western U.S. & Alaska | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Learners use the GPS Velocity Viewer, or the included map packet to visualize relationships between earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate boundaries as a jigsaw activity.

Getting started with Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry
Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry method uses overlapping images to create a 3D point cloud of an object or landscape. It can be applied to everything from fault scarps to landslides to topography. This ...

Plate Tectonics: GPS Data, Boundary Zones, and Earthquake Hazards
Students work with high precision GPS data to explore how motion near a plate boundary is distributed over a larger region than the boundary line on the map. This allows them to investigate how earthquake hazard ...