Explore Real Data from an Ice Core
Jason Cervenec, Ohio State University-Main Campus; Stacy Porter, Wittenberg University
Ice core data allow students to explore a number of patterns while learning that researchers need to gather and interpret evidence to understand Earth's past. Students will explore core data collected in ...

Ocean currents and overflows
Stefanie Semper, University of Bergen
We are researchers and teachers in physical oceanography. Here we provide a lesson plan including materials, to explore ocean currents and specifically "underwater waterfalls", i.e., overflows in the ...

Module 3 Sea Ice as an Indicator of Climate Change
Jonathan Cohen, University of Delaware; Matthew Oliver, University of Delaware; Victoria E Simons, University of Delaware
This module focuses on the differences between the Arctic and Antarctic in terms of physical factors like sea ice cover. This is the first polar content-heavy module of the course, and it relies on skills built in ...

Rally Speeches for Coastal Optimism
Laura Guertin, Penn State Brandywine
Storytelling is an effective way to communicate what is happening along our local-to-international coastal zones. However, most of the stories students hear are ones of "doom and gloom." Therefore, ...

Bomb Cyclones - They're Explosive!
Jacqui Degan, Cape Fear Community College
Storms can have devastating impacts on coastal communities. Typically, tropical storms like hurricanes get the most attention, but there are other types of storms that occur at more northern latitudes that can be ...

Module 6 Capstone – Reversing the Process
Jonathan Cohen, University of Delaware; Victoria E Simons, University of Delaware; Matthew Oliver, University of Delaware
This final module is a capstone project where students have to use what they have learned up until now to create their own news article based on a data set they find. The idea behind this project is that students ...

Module 5 Human Dimensions in the Poles
Jonathan Cohen, University of Delaware; Matthew Oliver, University of Delaware; Victoria E Simons, University of Delaware
This unit covers the concept of bioaccumulation of contaminants in a food web, all the way up to humans. Students learn about what constitutes a contaminant, how contaminants can accumulate in an organism and move ...

Wind and Ocean Ecosystems
Alanna Lecher, Lynn University; April Watson, Lynn University
Wind has a fundamental impact on ocean ecosystems. Wind drives physical processes, including current development and upwelling through Ekman transport. These physical processes, in turn, have cascading impacts on ...

Episodic tremor and slip: The Case of the Mystery Earthquakes | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Earthquakes in western Washington and Oregon are to be expected—the region lies in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Offshore, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate subducts under the North American plate, from northern California to British Columbia. The region, however, also experiences exotic seismicity— Episodic Tremor and Slip (ETS).In this lesson, your students study seismic and GPS data from the region to recognize a pattern in which unusual tremors--with no surface earthquakes--coincide with jumps of GPS stations. This is ETS. Students model ductile and brittle behavior of the crust with lasagna noodles to understand how properties of materials depend on physical conditions. Finally, they assemble their knowledge of the data and models into an understanding of ETS in subduction zones and its relevance to the millions of residents in Cascadia.

Paleoclimate and Ocean Biogeochemistry
Allison Jacobel, Middlebury College
This module guides students through an examination of how surface ocean productivity relates to global climate on glacial-interglacial timescales and how the availability of ocean nutrients can be correlated with ...