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.

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.

Measuring Ground Motion with GPS: How GPS Works
With printouts of typical GPS velocity vectors found near different tectonic boundaries and models of a GPS station, demonstrate how GPS work to measure ground motion.GPS velocity vectors point in the direction that a GPS station moves as the ground it is anchored to moves. The length of a velocity vector corresponds to the rate of motion. GPS velocity vectors thus provide useful information for how Earth's crust deforms in different tectonic settings.

Unit 2: Examining the Distribution of Mass Wasting Events
What factors contribute to the distribution patterns of mass wasting events? In this unit, students will use a frequency-ratio method, one of the most common quantitative methods used in the statistical analysis of ...

Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Students analyze data to study the motion of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. From GPS data, students detect relative motion between the plates in the San Andreas fault zone--with and without earthquakes. To get to that discovery, they use physical models to understand the architecture of GPS, from satellites to sensitive stations on the ground. They learn to interpret time series data collected by stations (in the spreading regime of Iceland), to cast data as horizontal north-south and east-west vectors, and to add those vectors head-to-tail.Students then apply their skills and understanding to data in the context of the strike-slip fault zone of a transform plate boundary. They interpret time series plots from an earthquake in Parkfield, CA to calculate the resulting slip on the fault and (optionally) the earthquake's magnitude.

Detecting Cascadia's changing shape with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
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.

Unit 2: Mashing it up: physical models of deformation and strain
Students gain an intuitive understanding of strain and deformation through a series of physical model activities using everyday materials such as bungee cords, rubber bands, fabric, index cards, silly putty, sand, ...

Unit 1-SfM: Introduction to SfM
This unit introduces students to Structure from Motion (SfM). SfM is a photogrammetric technique that uses overlapping images to construct a 3D model of the scene and has widespread research applications in ...

Pinpointing Location with GPS Demonstration: How GPS Works (Part 2)
Using string, bubble gum, and a model of a GPS station, demonstrate how GPS work to pinpoint a location on Earth.Precisely knowing a location on Earth is useful because our Earth's surface is constantly changing from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tectonic plate motion, landslides, and more. Thus, scientists can use positions determined with GPS to study all these Earth processes.

Unit 4: Hydraulic Modeling and Flood Inundation Mapping using HEC-RAS
The flow or discharge value in a river does not mean much to a layperson or a decision maker because this flow can be insignificant on a big river but can be dangerous on a small creek. Thus, we must know how to ...