Exploring the ocean floor and near shore societal issues using data sets.

Ron Schott, Dan Murray, Becky Boger, Rob Graziano, Erin Heffron, Matt Arsenault, and Shelley Olds
Topic: marine science, ocean science, coastal hazards, and bathymetry
Course Type: intro

Description

Guided tour of the ocean floor—start with world—ocean ridges, sea mounts, volcanoes, trench , smokers, canyons, dredged areas, shelf, and then zooming in to the coastal world.
(Example: Hudson river, scoured, painting the sea surface temperature.)

(30m imagery)—marching down the coast of interesting ocean-forms

Then going into specifics (sand dune transport, depositional environment, spoils deposits, physical pollutants)

What shapes result from what processes?

What are the kinds of issues? (news) erosion, oil spills, fishery—more images
What do you look for?

(Chadam lidar)

Showing some datasets, such as bathymetry, water quality, sediment plumes, texture, ocean current speed at different depths (some regions gomoos, gulf of mexico)
Change in coastal shape over time. (some lidar over time Katrina, Carolinas, etc)

Then they go and do a projects (ex pre-service teachers go find datasets and create a lesson plan)

Goals

Students should be able to describe that the ocean floor is not flat and be able to identify major features.

Then
Talk intelligently about societal concerns, geohazards, quality ... I think that ... in 50 years..
By using data sets to investigate based on a list of datasets.

Assessment

They are a coastal zone engineer... they are a consultant
Post a question—students would create a presentation for the local community that discusses the issue, reasons for/against

make recommendations

How they would do it
How would they investigate it

References