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 4: Groundwater, GPS, and Water Resources
GPS data can measure ground elevation change in response to the changing amount of groundwater in valleys and snow cover in mountains. In this module, students will learn how to read GPS data to interpret how the ...

Unit 1: Exploring the Reservoirs and Pathways and Methods to Measure the Hydrologic Cycle
How does water move throughout the Earth system? How do scientists measure the amount of water that moves through these pathways? This unit provides an alternative way for students to learn the major components of ...

Unit 4: Comparing risks at different volcanoes
Students assess the risks from three different volcanoes based on the Risk Equation, Risk = Hazard x Value x Vulnerability. The three volcanoes--Fuego Guatemala, Rinjani Indonesia, and Moana Loa Hawaii--have ...

Unit 2: Global Sea-Level Response to Temperature Changes: Temperature and Altimetry Data
What is the contribution of seawater thermal expansion to recent sea-level rise? In this unit, students create time-series graphs of global averaged sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) data spanning 1880–2017 ...

Unit 2: Kilauea Hawai'i - Monday Morning Meeting at the USGS Hawai'i Volcano Observatory
How do volcanologists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory monitor volcanoes? In a jigsaw format, students first work in teams to learn one of the four volcano monitoring data sets (GPS, Tilt, Seismic and InSAR) and ...

Unit 1: Collecting GPS Data
GPS data can measure vertical and horizontal bedrock motion caused by a variety of geologic processes, such as plate movement and the changing amount of water and ice on Earth's surface. In this unit, students ...

Unit 2.1: Geodetic survey of an outcrop for road cut design
This unit offers an alternative application for high-resolution topographic data from an outcrop. Using engineering geology methods and data collection from TLS and/or SfM, students design safe "road ...

Unit 3: Static GPS/GNSS Methods
The application of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in the earth sciences has become commonplace. GNSS data can produce high-accuracy, high-resolution measurements in common reference frames. Static GNSS ...

Unit 1: GPS/GNSS Fundamentals
The constellations of satellites orbiting our planet enable high-precision positioning not just for consumer or survey applications but also for geoscience research such as detecting plate motions, landslide ...