Long-Term Sedimentology Projects Using Local Geological and Environmental Problems
Summary
Context
Audience
Skills and concepts that students must have mastered
How the activity is situated in the course
Goals
Content/concepts goals for this activity
Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity
Other skills goals for this activity
Description of the activity/assignment
The introductory presentations are followed by group discussions to formulate the hypothesis(es) to be tested and determine the experimental design, with due consideration to the constraints listed above. It is important that students understand their individual responsibilities and their role in the larger group effort. In the following weeks, students are provided with the materials and methods they need to conduct each phase of the project. Students collect and process their own data whenever possible. Preferably this phase involves field description and collection of samples for later lab analysis but previously collected sediment or rock cores or samples may also be used. Data analysis is a class-wide effort with each student or student team contributing a component to a larger class-wide database. Workload expectations must be clearly defined and students must conform to a tight timeframe during the analysis portion of the exercise so that the final database is complete and available on schedule. Interim deadlines for data components generally help students stay on schedule during this phase. Data synthesis and final report preparation are individual efforts. Students are encouraged to be creative in the interpretation and presentation of their results but are warned not to draw conclusions that cannot be supported by their data.
Examples of long-term projects that have been used for sedimentology at SUNY Plattsburgh include:
- Particle shape analysis of beach and fluvial gravel in the Champlain Valley
- Provenance of glacial till in the Champlain Valley and northeastern Adirondack Mountain region
- Sedimentology, stratigraphy and landslide susceptibility of proglacial lake and marine deposits on the Lake Champlain lakeshore in Plattsburgh, NY
- Sedimentology and stratigraphy of the Potsdam Sandstone in the Champlain Valley
- Sedimentological evidence for breakout floods in proglacial lake and marine deposits in the Champlain Valley
Determining whether students have met the goals
Teaching materials and tips
- Description of the long-term projects used in Sedimentology in spring 2006 (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 39kB Jul4 06)
Other Materials
- Example: Particle size analysis I (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 213kB Jul4 06)
- Example: Particle size analysis II (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 546kB Jul4 06)
- Example: Particle shape analysis (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 347kB Jul4 06)
- Guidelines for report writing (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 91kB Jul4 06)