Indiana River Meanders Mapping Exercise
In Indiana, major rivers and their tributaries cross much of the state. These rivers can produce significant hazards related to flooding and erosion, which threaten nearby residents and infrastructure. Rivers are ...

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 ...

Working with Point Clouds in CloudCompare and Classifying with CANUPO
This exercise will walk you through 1) basic operations and use in CloudCompare, and 2) use of an Open-Source plugin in CloudCompare called CANUPO (http://nicolas.brodu.net/en/recherche/canupo/) that allows for ...

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: Channel Capacity and Manning's Equation
A flood occurs when the flow rate in a river exceeds the capacity of a channel to transmit water downstream within its banks. How much water can a channel transmit? Answering this question requires measurements of ...

This unit builds on what students have learned about transform fault hazards to introduce the idea of risk. Students examine earthquake risk along the San Andreas Fault in San Francisco by examining public school ...

Unit 6.1: Making Distal Observations
What tools do scientists use to investigate planets from a distance? In this unit, students unpack the tools of the trade used in remote sensing to understand which types of data are used to identify features and ...

DEM of Difference (DoD)
This assignment builds on students' point cloud and raster differencing skills practiced on their SfM and TLS data in the previous assignment. In this assignment, the students use two lidar-derived raster ...

Unit 6 Hazards and Risk at Convergent Plate Boundaries (Day 2 of activity)
In this two-day activity, students monitor a simulated evolving volcanic crisis at a convergent plate boundary (Cascadia). Using monitoring data and geologic hazard maps, students make a series of forecasts for the ...

Recognizing and mapping faults using lidar and field data
In this activity, students create a geologic map and cross-section of the Fish Springs cinder cone and surrounding area in the Owens Valley, CA, using a high-resolution DEM developed from airborne lidar data as a ...