InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Coastal Processes, Hazards and Society > Student Materials > Section 2: Introduction to Coastal Zone Hazards: Long and Short-term Processes of Change and Their Impacts on Society > Module 4: Understanding Sea Level Change > Goals and Objectives
InTeGrate's Earth-focused Modules and Courses for the Undergraduate Classroom
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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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These student materials complement the Coastal Processes, Hazards and Society Instructor Materials. If you would like your students to have access to the student materials, we suggest you either point them at the Student Version which omits the framing pages with information designed for faculty (and this box). Or you can download these pages in several formats that you can include in your course website or local Learning Managment System. Learn more about using, modifying, and sharing InTeGrate teaching materials.

Goals and Objectives

Goals

  • Students will develop fundamental geospatial (linking geography and geology) skills and concepts needed to assess coastal processes that produce sea level change.
  • Students will be able to explain what sea level is and differentiate the mechanisms that interact to produce changes in sea level over short-term and long-term time periods.
  • Students will characterize trends in sea level over geologic time and conceptualize how changes in sea level can result in various spatial scales of coastline change.
  • Students will use real tidal gauge data from diverse global regions to identify recent trends in sea level change and will use these trends to formulate reasonable projections for future sea level positions.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

  • describe modern sea level position in the context of sea level change over the last 500 million years, within the Pleistocene-Holocene (last 2 million years), and identify factors (climate change, tectonics, sea-floor spreading, etc.) responsible for sea level change;
  • discuss the spatial scales over which coastal processes (tides, currents, storms, tectonics, climate change, etc.) operate and impact landform development;
  • discriminate the causes (and interplay of causes) of local, regional, and global sea level change and associated impacts on coastal biogeomorphology;
  • locate and use key datasets (tide records, storm data, etc.) to analyze daily, seasonal, inter-annual, and longer-term dynamics of coastal processes including global and regional sea level change, and their impact on coastal landforms.

Lesson 4 Roadmap

AssignmentLocation
To Read

Read all content on the website and associated weblinks as noted.

Additional extra readings are clearly noted and can be pursued as your time and interest allows.

All on the Web. Click title of the reading to link to the material.

To DoBLENDED CLASS
  1. Formative Assessment: Recognizing Short- & Long- Term Sea Level Change
  2. Summative Assessment: Tide Gauge Data
  • Submit Formative Assessment and Summative Assessment in attached word documents.
To Do

ONLINE ONLY CLASS

  1. Summative Assessment: Tide Gauge Data

These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »