University Park ONLY: Formative Assessment Part 1: Visualization and Questions Interactive Earth

Can you recognize short-term and long-term sea level change? Try it in Interactive Earth!

As mentioned in the introduction to this formative assessment, you will be engaging in activities to help you examine how tides and storm surges work and the scales at which they operate. As you work through the questions below, you can enter your responses into the blanks provided, and when you are satisfied with your answers, you will be able to save them.

So, let's get started.

For a simple, interactive visual to help understand tides and basic sea level change, visit the Interactive Earth website. The website will launch in a new window. The Interactive Earth website allows you to change a variety of parameters including tidal characteristics, storm impacts, lunar phase effects, etc. When you hit "play," change the speed to slow or speed-up the visualization so you can see what happens.

You will need to complete the questions and turn them in using the worksheet linked below. The questions are provided here for your convenience.

Files

Download this Worksheet (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 19kB Sep7 16)

Part I: Interactive Earth Questions

1. Water levels on a given shoreline vary every day as a result of a number of different factors. One of the primary driving factors is related to the lunar phase. In the control box of the visualization, speed up the animation and carefully study the lunar phase and the associated water levels. During a new or full moon tidal range will be _________ relative to other lunar phases. This is because the sun and the moon are aligned on the same side of the Earth and are said to be in syzygy. In contrast, water levels will show the _________tidal range during partial moon phases.

a. lowest; highest

b. dampened, accentuated

c. highest, lowest

d. hard to answer this question without more information

2. As you study the tidal cycle, you will notice that the timing of high and low tides each day is offset, that is high-tide does not happen at the same time each day. Watch the visualization for a few seconds and then hit pause so you can freeze the screen to answer the question. Although the amplitude of tides (i.e., some have one high-high tide and one low-high tide or one low-low tide and one high-low tide) can vary each day, most locations on Earth will have two high tides and two low tides in a lunar day. This offset is because of the lunar day. Based on your analysis, how long is it between subsequent high tides and how long is it between a high and a low tide?

a. A lunar day = 24 hours and 50 minutes; Time between high and low tides is about 12 hours, 25 minutes; Time between high tides is 6 hours, 12.5 minutes on average

b. A lunar day = 12 hours; Time between high and low tides is about 12 hours; Time between high tides is 6 hours.

c. A lunar day = 24 hours and 50 minutes; Time between subsequent high tides is about 12 hours, 25 minutes; Time between high and low tides is 6 hours, 12.5 minutes on average.

d. Tidal cycles are too variable to determine the time between high and low tides.

3. Go back to the model and add a storm event to the mix to see how sea levels change relative to the normal tidal cycle. To do this, add a storm with a one day duration and with a surge height that is equal to your normal tidal range, let the model run to see what happens, and hit pause after the tides return to normal. Do this for several lunar phases (full moon, quarter moon). Given this model, rank the following scenarios according to worst case scenarios for potential for damage on the shoreline to the best case scenario.

(Most Damage) Worst Case: ______ ______ ______ ______ Best Case (Least Damage)

Scenario 1: storm surge hits during full moon at low tide

Scenario 2: storm surge hits during quarter moon at high tide

Scenario 3: storm surge hits during full moon at high tide

Scenario 4: storm surge hits during quarter moon at low tide

Now what about long-term sea-level rise impacts? In the model, you can add a long-term sea level rise factor to see what happens. By speeding up the visualization, it is possible to see that more and more of the coast line will be inundated to the point that low tides in the future will be higher than high tides today. Making any more specific observations in this module is difficult, so to better visualize the scenarios associated with long-term sea level rise, we will look at the other visualization models.