• Processes driving erosion in different locations

• Limitations to primary literature (analyzing literature)
• Thinking about the regional context of work and whether it can be extended to other locations
• How to reconcile seemingly disparate results (evaluating literature)
• How much can you interpret from a given data set (analyzing and evaluating data)

• Working in groups to discuss the papers and try to understand them
• Analyzing and evaluating primary literature

Burbank, D. W., Blythe, A. E., Putkonen, J., Pratt-Sitaula, B., Gabet, E., Oskin, M., Barros, A., and Ojha, T. P., 2003, Decoupling of erosion and precipitation in the Himalayas: Nature, v. 426, no. 6967, p. 652-655.

Dadson, S. J., Hovius, N., Chen, H., Dade, W. B., Hsieh, M. L., Willet, S. D., Hu, J. C., Horng, M. J., Chen, M. C., Stark, C. P., Lague, D., and Lin, J. C., 2003, Links between erosion, runoff variability and seismicity in the Taiwan orogen: Nature, v. 426, no. 11 December 2003, p. 648-651.

Henck, A., Huntington, K. W., Stone, J. O., Montgomery, D. R., and Hallet, B., 2011, Spatial controls on erosion in the Three Rivers Region, southwest China: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 303, p. 71-83.

Molnar, P., 2003, Nature, nurture and landscape: Nature, v. 426, no. 11 December 2003, p. 612-614.

Reiners, P. W., Ehlers, T. A., Mitchell, S. G., and Montgomery, D. R., 2003, Coupled spatial variations in precipitation and long-term erosion rates across the Washington Cascades: Nature, v. 426, no. 6967, p. 645-647.

Due to copyright reasons I cannot upload the papers referenced in this activity. Please contact me if you do not have access to them through your school library.

A few comments on dealing with range of students in the class: This is a persistent problem over the course of the entire semester. I have students that range from taking their second geology class in college to those who have taken every class that we offer. I try to encourage the more senior students to work with the younger ones so that they are gaining skills by explaining information to younger students rather than getting irritated that the class is moving slowly. There are times that it is unavoidable, but I do try to spread the seniors out. In activities such as this one, where I assign who reads which paper, I make a point of spreading out the seniors. It's harder to make that work for the second groups, but I think with careful planning, you probably could.

In terms of guiding students in their discussion of the papers, I do this a bit in the introduction to the activity. The students in my class also have read ~6 papers from the literature on geomorphology by the time they get to this activity. This helps enormously as it means that students already have some context for how to read and understand papers in the scientific literature. They also write full lab reports (3/student/semester) and in setting up the rubric for grading lab reports, we have already gone over what types of information go into each part of a paper. If your students don't have this background, I think it is important to discuss with them how papers are organized, what goes into each section, and how Nature papers are a bit different from other papers. Talking with students about papers telling stories may help as well.

Common misconceptions/stumbling blocks students have and how to address them:

• Where the methods are in Nature papers. This is probably best addressed in the introduction to the activity or else you will be explaining it to every group over and over again.
• What the different time scales are for different pieces of data. This isn't really a misconception as much as something to watch out for with students. They don't always realize that the different types of data don't happen over the same period of time. I find it helpful to have them think about what the different timescales mean.
• Students often don't critically evaluate the claim in each of the papers that what they learn is universally true. This is probably the biggest misconception that comes out of the assignment. So helping students to think critically about the geologic context for each paper helps them to feel less like they are irreconcilable.
• Students have trouble reading the topographic profile figures. Going over these at the beginning of class could be helpful.
• Students have trouble getting deeper and thinking that the authors may not automatically be correct. This is similar to another point, but it's more about whether the conclusions they draw from the data are even something the students agree with.
• Given the different timescales that climate (modern precipitation), tectonics, and erosion happen over, it's helpful to do some conceptual model discussions with students about feedbacks between these terms. So how could precipitation drive erosion? What about tectonics? How can tectonics drive climate (modern precip)? What about erosion? How can erosion drive climate and tectonics? Under what circumstances is one arrow/direction more important than others? I think this helps them to evaluate the papers a bit better.

I use a formative assessment of student discussion quality. Specific questions to consider with the formative assessment are outlined below, organized by first round (all have read the paper) and second round (with people who have not read the paper).

First round - when students are discussing with others who have read the same paper:

• Do students understand the question being asked/hypothesis being tested in the paper? Here I am looking for simple re-casting of the main goals of the study. If not, ask them leading questions to get them to think about the goals of the paper they read.
• Do they understand the methods and type of data being presented in the paper? Here I am looking for a quick summary of the methods/results. If not, ask them leading questions to help them to get this information from the paper. Sometimes they have trouble with this if they don't look at color versions of the figures, so it helps to have a color printout. They also have problems with the organization of Nature papers - methods at the end - so talking them through that can help too.
• Do they understand the conclusions being drawn? Here I am looking for knowledge of the paper. As above, I ask leading questions to get them there if they don't. I also answer their questions.
• Can they identify any limitations for the paper? Here is where the leading questions can be really helpful. Helping them to think about geographic/spatial limits of the study (they are all very spatially specific), technique limits (such as distribution of samples or time scale of comparisons), and whether the conclusions agree with what they see in the figures. This section takes a bit of mentoring for groups with younger students who have taken fewer geology classes. With this point, I am looking for students to understand the paper well enough to evaluate it, rather than just summarize it. If they need help getting there, I try to help them.

Second round - when students are presenting their paper to peers who haven't read it. This part gives me more information about how well specific students understood what they read:

• Does the presenting student articulate clearly the goals, methods, results, and conclusions of the paper they read?
• What is the quality of the questions asked by the students? Are they at the level of summarizing or are they evaluating?

In the case of my class, the feedback the students get is me answering questions, asking them questions, and verbally telling them that I agree with what they are saying. Their participation becomes part of their participation grade for the course.

All of these bullet points could be used in a writing assignment. Students could write abstracts for the paper they read and could write a response paper evaluating the arguments in the three papers after the discussion.

Burbank, D. W., Blythe, A. E., Putkonen, J., Pratt-Sitaula, B., Gabet, E., Oskin, M., Barros, A., and Ojha, T. P., 2003, Decoupling of erosion and precipitation in the Himalayas: Nature, v. 426, no. 6967, p. 652-655.

Dadson, S. J., Hovius, N., Chen, H., Dade, W. B., Hsieh, M. L., Willet, S. D., Hu, J. C., Horng, M. J., Chen, M. C., Stark, C. P., Lague, D., and Lin, J. C., 2003, Links between erosion, runoff variability and seismicity in the Taiwan orogen: Nature, v. 426, no. 11 December 2003, p. 648-651.

Henck, A., Huntington, K. W., Stone, J. O., Montgomery, D. R., and Hallet, B., 2011, Spatial controls on erosion in the Three Rivers Region, southwest China: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 303, p. 71-83.

Molnar, P., 2003, Nature, nurture and landscape: Nature, v. 426, no. 11 December 2003, p. 612-614.