Discover Plate Tectonics
Angela Daneshmand, Santiago Canyon College
This is a student-centered activity for a synchronous online course where students access google slides to complete during a video conferencing session (eg. Zoom) in break out rooms. Students will be introduced to ...

Converging Tectonic Plates Demonstration
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
During this demo, participants use springs and a map of the Pacific Northwest with GPS vectors to investigate the stresses and surface expression of subduction zones, specifically the Juan de Fuca plate diving beneath the North American plate.

Getting started with Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry
Beth Pratt-Sitaula, EarthScope
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 ...

Indiana River Meanders Mapping Exercise
Emily Zawacki, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
In Indiana, major rivers and their tributaries cross much of the state. These rivers can produce significant hazards related to flooding and erosion, which threaten nearby residents and infrastructure. Rivers are ...

Karst Hydrogeology: A virtual field introduction using Google Earth and GIS
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, lidar data-sourced DEM(s) and geologic maps, and GIS software (QGIS) ...

Lecture Tutorials for Introductory Physical Geology
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
These activities take place in a lecture setting and require ~5-10 minutes to complete. Students apply lecture topics directly to answer questions, interpret maps and photographs, perform calculations, and plot ...

Geological Mapping of a Virtual Landscape
Mark Helper, The University of Texas at Austin
This virtual mapping exercise is part video game, part map prediction and interpretation. You will navigate a virtual landscape to "collect" outcrops and their field notes, recording your observations on ...

Let's Look Inside the Earth
David Zelenka
Students will analyze USGS seismology data in the classroom using spreadsheets and scatter plots to look for patterns and structure in the Earth's crust. Before analyzing data, students will learn about the ...

Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology: A virtual field experience using Google Earth, GIS, and TAK
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 ...

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.

Working with Point Clouds in CloudCompare and Classifying with CANUPO
Sharon Bywater-Reyes, University of Northern Colorado
This exercise will walk you through 1) basic operations and use in CloudCompare, and 2) use of an Open-Source plugin in CloudCompare called CANUPO (http://nicolas.brodu.net/en/recherche/canupo/) that allows for ...

Feldspar Minerals and Triangle Diagrams
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students learn how to read a triangle or ternary diagram. They determine physical properties of feldspars and interpret two ...

Visualizing Relationships with Data: Exploring plate boundaries with Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and GPS Data in the Western U.S. & Alaska | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Learners use the GPS Velocity Viewer, or the included map packet to visualize relationships between earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate boundaries as a jigsaw activity.

Igneous Rocks and Triangle Diagrams
Eileen Herrstrom, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students observe igneous rock compositions and plot them on triangle diagrams, normalize rock compositions using a ...

Nutrient Loading Module
This module was initially developed by Castendyk, D.N., T. Meixner, and C.A. Gibson. 6 June 2015. Project EDDIE: Nutrient Loading. Project EDDIE Module 7, Version 1. Module development was supported by NSF DEB 1245707.
Estimating nutrient loads is a critical concept for students studying water quality in a variety of environmental settings. Many STEM/Environmental science students will be asked to assess the impacts of a proposed anthropogenic activities on human water resources and/or ecosystems as part of their future careers. This module engages students in exploring factors contributing to the actual loads of nitrogen that are transmitted down streams. Nitrogen is a key water quality contaminant contributing to surface water quality issues in fresh, salt, and estuarine environments. Students will utilize real-time nitrate data from the US Geological Survey to calculate nitrate loads for several locations and investigate the interplay of concentration and discharge that contributes to calculated loads.

Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Students analyze data to study the motion of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. From GPS data, students detect relative motion between the plates in the San Andreas fault zone--with and without earthquakes. To get to that discovery, they use physical models to understand the architecture of GPS, from satellites to sensitive stations on the ground. They learn to interpret time series data collected by stations (in the spreading regime of Iceland), to cast data as horizontal north-south and east-west vectors, and to add those vectors head-to-tail.Students then apply their skills and understanding to data in the context of the strike-slip fault zone of a transform plate boundary. They interpret time series plots from an earthquake in Parkfield, CA to calculate the resulting slip on the fault and (optionally) the earthquake's magnitude.

Cross-Scale Interactions
Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ; Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia
Environmental phenomena are often driven by multiple factors that interact across different spatial and temporal scales. In freshwater lakes and reservoirs worldwide, phytoplankton blooms are increasing in ...

Sedimentation Provenance Problem Set
Man-Yin Tsang, University of Toronto
Introduce students the concept of Sedimentation Provenance and how it can be studied from rock samples. Teach students to visualize mineral distributions in a basin and draw ternary QFR (quartz-feldspar-rock ...

Erosion in a River
Nicole LaDue, Northern Illinois University
× Formative assessment questions using a classroom response system ("clickers") can be used to reveal students' spatial understanding. Students are shown these diagrams and instructed to ...

Lake Modeling Module
This page was initially developed by Carey, C.C., S. Aditya, K. Subratie, and R. Figueiredo. 1 May 2016. Project EDDIE: Modeling Climate Change Effects on Lakes Using Distributed Computing. Project EDDIE Module 4, Version 1. Module development was supported by NSF DEB 1245707 and ACI 1234983. Note: An updated version of this module is available as part of the Macrosystems EDDIE project. Please visit the Climate Change Effects on Lake Temperatures module to view and download module files. We recommend using the updated Macrosystems EDDIE version of the module, as the Lake Modeling module materials have not been maintained with R code and software updates.
Lakes around the globe are experiencing the effects of climate change. In this module, students will learn how to use a lake model to explore the effects of altered weather on lakes, and then develop their own ...