Benjamin Crosby: Using High Precision Positioning with Static and Kinematic GPS/GNSS in GEOL 3315: Evolution of the Earth's Surface at Idaho State University
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Provenance: Ben Crosby, Idaho State University
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About this Course
Undergraduate, academic year, on-campus, mixed lower and upper division students majoring in Geology, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Education.
25
students
Course two 75-minute lectures and one 3-hour lab
Syllabus for Evolution of Earth Surface (Acrobat (PDF) 505kB Apr23 18)
GEOL 3315 Evolution of the Earth's Surface (4 semester hours): Evolution of the Earth's surface in recent geologic time. Physical and climatic processes that govern landscape evolution. Examination of landforms and landscapes to interpret paleo-environments and modern Earth surface processes. Lectures, discussions, laboratory exercises, and field trips. Prerequisites: GEOL 1100 or GEOL 1101, and GEOL 1110.
Course goals are to provide students with a broad introduction to surface processes with particular emphasis on glaciers, rivers and hillslope transport.
The module is used sparingly in this course to introduce students to mass movement processes and how we can track their creeping movement with geotechnologies. The experience is broken down into two sessions: a 3-hour lecture/lab introducing the students to GPS/GNSS followed by a 1-day field trip to a field site with an actively creeping landslide. All data processing is done by the instructor and was delivered to the students as a completed product. They used these results to evaluate change in terms of accuracy and precision, as well as to analyze the geomorphic significance.
This exercise is one of the first times students collect their own quantitative data in the field and are able to detect patterns and construct hypotheses based on those data.
My Experience Teaching with GETSI Materials
Module was modified and streamlined to fit the needs. The Unit 1 lecture was immediately followed with the Unit 2 lecture introducing students to kinematic systems. We then went into the field on campus and learned about the hardware and completed a concept sketch to let these ideas gel. On the weekend, we took these skills and applied them to track movement of ~80 monuments on a creeping landslide.
Relationship of GETSI Materials to my Course
The module is one of many week-long projects that the students do. It would be great to have it more integrated through the semester, but we do not return to GNSS again.
Unit 1: GPS/GNSS Fundamentals
- Introductory Lecture
- (Skipped Accuracy and Precision Exercise)
- Concept Sketch Exercise was combined into the deliverables in Unit 2.2 below.
Unit 2: Kinematic GPS/GNSS Methods
- Units 2 and 2.2. (Omitted Unit 2.1: Change Detection)
The lectures were used to assure that students knew the characteristics of kinematic systems.
Unit 2.1: Measuring Topography
Students explored the significance of change observed on the Salmon Falls Landslide, which has ~10 cm of displacement per year. A few benchmarks had data from over a decade earlier, whereas most of the benchmarks were initially measured more than year earlier. This was sufficient to track the movement of the landslide over a few years of data. The instructor provided the earlier data as well as the processed data that the students collected themselves. The final product included a concept sketch and analysis of the prepared results. Students had to:
- Describe how Kinematic-GPS works,
- Discuss if and why their survey design worked well and how
- Discuss the significance and interpretation of the observed changes in the landslide.
Unit 3: Static GPS/GNSS Methods
Assessments
Concept sketch summative assessments were enjoyed by the students and they had long arguments regarding the interpretation of the results from the landslide. I would prefer to have students do the post-processing, spatial analysis, and plot generation, but there is not sufficient time or expertise in the class to make this happen in a reasonable time.
Outcomes
At the end of the exercise, the students had learned both the technical skills necessary to operate the hardware, as well as the geomorphic skills necessary to interpret the results. This was the primary aim for using the module in this course (essentially Module Goal 1 only).
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