This assignment is designed for an introductory level physical geography lecture or lab though it could easily be modified for an upper level undergraduate geomorphology or coastal geology course.

Students need a basic understanding of coastal processes and some experience or an introduction to air photo analysis and converting measurements made on aerial photographs to actual distances.

This is a stand alone exercise for a coastal geomorphology section.

Goals include: analyzing aerial photographs, and understanding coastal evolution.

Analysis of data and synthesis of ideas

working in groups, understanding map scales

Students analyze a time-series of aerial photographs of beaches to describe changes in beach width and depositional features over several decades. This activity can be done with oblique aerial photographs to give a qualitative description of beach width changes, the location of dunes fronts, change in river position, changes in development density, and change in vegetation cover. Vertical aerial photographs can also be used and students can actually measure beach and dune widths over the time-series to quantify changes. If both oblique and vertical photographs are available, they can compare the two perspectives and perform both descriptive and quantitative assessments.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Designed for an introductory geology course
Uses online and/or real-time data

Students are evaluated on the data that they collect (that it makes sense) and on their interpretation of events.

California Coastal Records Project www.californiacoastline.org
U.C. Santa Barbara Map and Imagery Library (http://www.sdc.ucsb.edu/)
U.C. Berkeley Catalog of Aerial Photography (www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/air-catalog.html)
U.S.G.S. (http://seamless.usgs.gov/)
California Spatial Information Library (http://gis.ca.gov/data.epl)