Topographic differencing: Earthquake along the Wasatch fault part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
After a big earthquake happens people ask, 'Where did the earthquake occur? How big was it? What type of fault was activated?' We designed an undergraduate laboratory exercise in which students learn how ...

What's in the Water? Lesson 4: Drinking Water & Environmental Justice part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
In this lesson from the "What's in the Water?" PFAS Contamination Unit", students explore equity in drinking water across the U.S. For homework, students read segments of two recent reports ...

Plate Tectonics: GPS Data, Boundary Zones, and Earthquake Hazards part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Students work with high precision GPS data to explore how motion near a plate boundary is distributed over a larger region than the boundary line on the map. This allows them to investigate how earthquake hazard ...

Bomb Cyclones - They're Explosive! part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Storms can have devastating impacts on coastal communities. Typically, tropical storms like hurricanes get the most attention, but there are other types of storms that occur at more northern latitudes that can be ...

Working with Climate Change Data part of Introductory Courses:Activities
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students use spreadsheets to create graphs data related to climate change: sunspots, insolation, carbon dioxide, and global ...

Lake Ice Phenology Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Lakes are changing worldwide due to altered climate. Many lakes that were historically frozen in the winter are now experiencing fewer days of ice cover and earlier ice-off dates. In this module, students will ...

Unit 3: Codorus Creek Case Study: Measuring and Interpreting Seismic Refraction Data part of Measuring Depth to Bedrock Using Seismic Refraction
This unit presents an applied case study example and the associated concepts related to designing a seismic survey and analyzing the data. It discusses parts of the instrument and presents practical experience ...

Nutrient Loading Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Estimating nutrient loads is a critical concept for students studying water quality in a variety of environmental settings. Many STEM/Environmental science students will be asked to assess the impacts of a proposed anthropogenic activities on human water resources and/or ecosystems as part of their future careers. This module engages students in exploring factors contributing to the actual loads of nitrogen that are transmitted down streams. Nitrogen is a key water quality contaminant contributing to surface water quality issues in fresh, salt, and estuarine environments. Students will utilize real-time nitrate data from the US Geological Survey to calculate nitrate loads for several locations and investigate the interplay of concentration and discharge that contributes to calculated loads.

Understanding Doppler radar radial velocity fields part of Pedagogy in Action:Library:Spatial Reasoning with GeoClick Questions:Examples
This activity is designed to help students learn how to interpret Doppler radial velocity radar images with meteorological applications, as well as giving students a chance to practice their spatial skills.

Economics: Sea level rise part of PENGUIN:PENGUIN Modules
This module is framed from the perspective of a city planner trying to determine how much to spend on a local seawall given different scenarios of sea level rise and the associated storm surge and higher flood ...

Climate Change Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Scientists agree that the climate is changing and that human activities are a primary cause for this change through increased emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. There have been times in ...

Assessing the Risk of Invasive Species Using Community Science Data part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
This module introduces students who are already familiar with GIS to doing comparative analyses with large-scale community science (often called citizen science) data sets. Students will explore how we can use ...

Module 4 Polar Ecosystems part of Oceans in the News:Oceans in the News – Polar Ocean Science, Data, and the Media
This module follows logically from the previous and gives a biological context to sea ice. Students will review knowledge about seasonal trends in sea ice and learn how this impacts organisms that live in polar ...

Unit 2: Monitoring surface and groundwater supply in central and western US part of Eyes on the Hydrosphere: Tracking Water Resources
In Unit 2, students learn how the techniques for water budgeting (covered in Unit 1) can be used to monitor both groundwater (High Plains Aquifer) and surface water (western mountain watershed) systems. Students ...

Measuring Plate Motion with GPS: Iceland | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
This lesson teaches middle and high school students to understand the architecture of GPS—from satellites to research quality stations on the ground. This is done with physical models and a presentation. Then students learn to interpret data for the station's position through time ("time series plots"). Students represent time series data as velocity vectors and add the vectors to create a total horizontal velocity vector. They apply their skills to discover that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is rifting Iceland. They cement and expand their understanding of GPS data with an abstraction using cars and maps. Finally, they explore GPS vectors in the context of global plate tectonics.

Wind and Ocean Ecosystems part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Wind has a fundamental impact on ocean ecosystems. Wind drives physical processes, including current development and upwelling through Ekman transport. These physical processes, in turn, have cascading impacts on ...

Geoethics Case Study: The Keystone Pipeline--Energy, Jobs or Environment? part of GeoEthics:Activities
A case study page for geoscience educators that examines the ethical dimensions of the Keystone Pipeline project, covering energy needs, environmental impacts, indigenous rights, and climate change, while providing teaching materials and assessment tools to foster ethical decision-making in Earth science courses. auto-generated The author of this page didn't provide a brief description so this one sentence summary was created by an AI tool. It may not be completely accurate.

Frequency of Large Earthquakes part of EarthScope ANGLE:Educational Materials:Activities
Using the IRIS Earthquake Browser tool, students gather data to support a claim about how many large (Mw 8+) earthquakes will happen globally each year. This activity provides scaffolded experience downloading data and manipulating data within a spreadsheet.

Water Quality Module part of Project EDDIE:Teaching Materials:Modules
Water quality is a critical concept for undergraduate students studying Earth Sciences, Biology, and Environmental Sciences. Many of these students will be asked to assess the impacts of a proposed anthropogenic ...

Detecting Cascadia's changing shape with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Research-grade Global Positioning Systems (GPS) allow students to deduce that Earth's crust is changing shape in measurable ways. From data gathered by EarthScope's Plate Boundary Observatory, students discover that the Pacific Northwest of the United States and coastal British Columbia — the Cascadia region - are geologically active: tectonic plates move and collide; they shift and buckle; continental crust deforms; regions warp; rocks crumple, bend, and will break.