Field Teaching Activities
Throughout the field course, the various teaching activities are scaffolded and organized for first- and second-year students to practice key skills while developing content knowledge in geoscience, hydrology, ecology, and geomorphology. The field course syllabus demonstrates the ways in which the field activities build on each other to allow students to get the necessary skills practice to
Results 1 - 10 of 19 matches
Mono Lake Paleoshoreline Mapping
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
Students complete a series of geology, geomorphology, hydrology, and botany field exercises at a field site near the north shore of Mono Lake to generate interpretations of the lake through time. The Mono Lake ...
Poleta Stratigraphy
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
Based on field observations at Little Poleta, students identify and describe sedimentary rock units and measure the thicknesses of 5 different stratigraphic units. They then establish the field site's major ...
Poleta Bedrock Geologic Mapping
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
Students produce a bedrock geologic map of the Little Poleta field area from which they write a short interpretation of the paleoenvironment and geologic history of the region.
Sediment Transport
Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco
In this exercise, students gain experience observing streams. They practice measuring stream discharge, sediment sampling, and channel surveying, and using their field data, they make predictions about bed mobility.
Groundwater Potentiometric Surface Mapping
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
In this exercise, students map the elevation of the water table in the Mammoth Groundwater Basin using water levels measured in Mammoth County Water District monitoring wells.
Botany Field Observations
Sarah R. Hall, College of the Atlantic
Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco
John Paul, University of San Francisco
Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College
Plants form the link between the abiotic features of landscape (rock, soils, water, etc.) and the biotic world. California has a very rich and complex flora, making species identification sometimes very difficult. ...
Botanical Transect Mapping
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
Students gain experience "reading" landscapes using geologic, hydrological, and botanical/ecological techniques. They learn two simple and widely used methods for quantitatively measuring the density of ...
Field Presentation
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
During the E-STEM Field Course, each student was responsible for a field presentation related to a geology, geomorphology, hydrology, and/or ecology topic specific to the Sierras or Owens Valley. Depending on the ...
Mono Lake North Geomorphic Mapping
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
In this activity students observe Mono Lake North in the field and via remote imagery to identify fluvial geomorphic features. With these observations and data collected in the field students create annotated ...
Intro to Quantifying Stream Discharge and Base Flow
Sarah Hall, College of the Atlantic; Calla Schmidt, University of San Francisco; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
In this exercise, students calculate stream discharge from sample field data using the velocity-area method. They compare multiple measurements of discharge to determine base flow in a sample river reach.