Measuring the Inclination and Declination of the Earth's magnetic field with a smartphone part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Avradip Ghosh, University of Houston-University Park
The poles of the Earth's magnetic field are not precisely aligned with the geographic north and south poles and, in fact, vary continuously. This activity introduces to students the Earth's magnetic ...

Getting started with Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope Consortium
Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry method uses overlapping images to create a 3D point cloud of an object or landscape. It can be applied to everything from fault scarps to landslides to topography. This ...

Working with Point Clouds in CloudCompare and Classifying with CANUPO part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Sharon Bywater-Reyes, University of Northern Colorado
In spring 2020, the world was hit by a pandemic that spread globally by March, causing universities and most of the world to move to remote means. Summer field camps, long hailed as a rite of passage in the ...

Mid-Atlantic Appalachian Orogen Traverse – Field Trip 1 part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Steve Whitmeyer, James Madison University
The Mid-Atlantic Appalachian Orogen Traverse is a series of 4 virtual field trips that cross the Blue Ridge and Valley and Ridge geologic provinces in northwestern Virginia and northeastern West Virginia. This ...

Mid-Atlantic Appalachian Orogen Traverse – Field Trip 4 part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Steve Whitmeyer, James Madison University
The Mid-Atlantic Appalachian Orogen Traverse is a series of 4 virtual field trips that cross the Blue Ridge and Valley and Ridge geologic provinces in northwestern Virginia and northeastern West Virginia. This ...

Episodic tremor and slip: The Case of the Mystery Earthquakes | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley 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.

Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology: A virtual field experience using Google Earth, GIS, and TAK part of Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Rachel Bosch, Northern Kentucky University
Students will have the opportunity to select and virtually explore the hydrogeology and geomorphology of a karst landscape using Google Earth (or perhaps Google Mars or Google Moon if they so choose), lidar ...

Geometric and Kinematic Analysis in a Sandbox part of Structural Geology and Tectonics:Activities
Kim Hannula, Fort Lewis College
Introduction to the concepts of geometric and kinematic analysis, using an easily assembled sandbox. Students repeat experiments to see variation. The lab also reviews structural map symbols, and involves some ...

3D View from a Drone | Make a 3D Model From Your Photos part of Geodesy:Activities
Shelley Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Using cameras mounted to drones, students will design and construct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform in a process called structure from motion (SfM). This activity has both a hands-on component (collecting data with the drone) and a computer-based component (creating the 3-dimensional model).___________________Drones can take photos that can be analyzed later. By planning ahead to have enough overlap between photos, you take those individual photos and make a 3-dimensional image!In this activity, you guide the students to identify an outcrop or landform to study later or over repeat visits. They go through the process to plan, conduct, and analyze an investigation to help answer their science question.The Challenge: Design and conduct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform, then analyze the image and interpret the resulting 3-d image.For instance they might wish to study a hillside that has been changed from a previous forest fire. How is the hillside starting to shift after rainstorms or snows? Monitoring an area over many months can lead to discoveries about how the erosional processes happen and also provide homeowners, park rangers, planners, and others valuable information to take action to stabilize areas to prevent landslides.

The Panama Passageway: Using the PBDB to constrain the timing and extent of the The Great American Biotic Interchange part of Introductory Courses:Activities
Callan Bentley, Piedmont Virginia Community College
Students learn how to use the online Paleobiology Database to map changes in the distribution of fossil vertebrates in the Americas through time. They will generate distribution maps for several key fossil groups ...