Glacier (?) National Park

Module by: Judy McIlrath, University of South Florida

Cover Page by: Len Vacher and Denise Davis, University of South Florida

This material was originally developed by Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum as part of its collaboration with the SERC Pedagogic Service.

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes (view details)

This activity has been selected for inclusion in the CLEAN collection.
This activity has been extensively reviewed for inclusion in the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network's collection of educational resources. For information the process and the collection, see http://cleanet.org/clean/about/selected_by_CLEAN.
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.

Initial Publication Date: November 18, 2010 | Reviewed: March 2, 2023 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

In this Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum activity, students examine data pertaining to the disappearing glaciers in Glacier National Park. After calculating percentage change of the number of glaciers from 1850 (150) to 1968 (50) and 2009 (26), they move on to the main glacier-monitoring content of the module--area vs. time data for the Grinnell Glacier, one of 26 glaciers that remain in the park. Using a second-order polynomial (quadratic function) fitted to the data, they extrapolate to estimate when there will be no Grinnell Glacier remaining (illustrating the relevance of the question mark in the title of the module). Introductory material includes expository slides on the geology of the park (the Lewis Thrust, the Precambrian rocks, glacial features), a time series of photographs for Grinnell Glacier, and a USGS animation of the changing environments and disappearing glacial cover since 1850. The main QL content is interpolation and extrapolation.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number NSF DUE-0836566. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Geoscience | College Introductory, College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)

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Learning Goals

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Students will:

Complete a spreadsheet to calculate percentage of glaciers remaining and the percent decrease in the number of glaciers in Glacier National Park since 1850.
Observe changes in Grinnell Glacier from 1938 to 2006 through repeat photography.
Do an interpolation problem (simple nonlinear) to find the area of Grinnell Glacier in 1900 given the data from 15 other years from 1850 to 2000.
Extrapolate the data to estimate when Grinnell Glacier will be gone.
Apply the quadratic formula as an option to solve a problem.
Read Mark Twain's well-known take on extrapolation that "scientists" do.
See numerous photographs of the iconic geologic setting of this consequential environmental-geological data set.

In the process the students will:

Learn what glaciers are and that they are being monitored.
See from the data that the glaciers are shrinking and get a feel for how fast.
Get a little insight as to why the National Park Service considers climate change to be the biggest threat to our national parks.
Get practice with percentages and percent change.
Use extrapolation to calculate a result that might trouble them.
See a use for the quadratic formula.

Context for Use

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This module is designed for potential use in the Geology of National Parks service course at USF. The course is offered as an online course every semester. It includes readings from Parks and Plates, weekly quizzes based on that textbook, and weekly student activities designed to align the course with the University's general education requirements. This module is intended to be one of those activities, with the specific goal of meeting the gen-ed quantitative literacy dimension.

Description and Teaching Materials

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The module is a PowerPoint presentation with embedded spreadsheets. Click on the link below to download a copy of the module.

PowerPoint SSACgnp.GB2403.JAM1.6 (PowerPoint 12MB May20 13)

Optimal results are achieved with Microsoft Office 2007 or later; the module will function in earlier versions with slight cosmetic compromises. If the embedded spreadsheets are not visible, save the PowerPoint file to disk and open it from there.

The above PowerPoint presentation file is the student version of the module. It includes a template for students to use to complete the spreadsheet(s) and answer the end-of-module questions, and then turn in for grading.

An instructor version is available by request. The instructor version includes the completed spreadsheet. Send your request to Len Vacher (vacher@usf.edu) by filling out and submitting the Instructor Module Request Form.

Teaching Notes and Tips

The module is constructed to be a stand-alone resource. It can be used as a homework assignment, lab activity, or as the basis of an interactive classroom activity. It was used as an out-of-class activity in a senior-elective course, Environmental Geology of the National Parks (for geology majors and nonmajors), during development of the module in Spring 2010, and as an out-of-class activity in Computational Geology (a QL course for geology majors) in Fall 2010 and Fall 2011. In general, the students considered this module to be one of the more elementary modules in the collection. It is now one of the modules that is rotated into the online introductory-level Geology of National Parks course.

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Assessment

There is a slide at the end of the presentation that contains end-of-module questions. The end-of-module questions can be used to examine student understanding and learning gains from the module. Pre/post test, pre/post test answer key, and answer key for end-of-module questions are at the end of the instructor version of the module.