Initial Publication Date: May 16, 2024
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Quantitative Activities for Earth Science Disciplines


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Unit 1: Climate Change and Sea Level: Who Are the Stakeholders?
Bruce Douglas, Indiana University-Bloomington; Susan Kaspari, Central Washington University
How are rising sea levels already influencing different regions? This unit offers case study examples for a coastal developing country (Bangladesh), a major coastal urban area (southern California), and an island ...

Quantitative Skills: Estimation
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change:Impacts of climate change, Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change, Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy, Geoscience:Geology:Environmental Geology, Geoscience:Hydrology, Environmental Science:Water Quality and Quantity, Sustainability, Natural Hazards, Global Change and Climate:Sea Level Change, Climate Change:Impacts of climate change, Environmental Science:Global Change and Climate:Climate Change, Environmental Science:Global Change and Climate, Environmental Science
Grade Level: College Upper (15-16)
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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Unit 3: Global Sea-Level Response to Ice Mass Loss: GRACE and InSAR data
Bruce Douglas, Indiana University-Bloomington; Susan Kaspari, Central Washington University
What is the contribution of melting ice sheets compared to other sources of sea-level rise? How much is the sea level projected to increase during the twenty-first century? In this unit, students will use Gravity ...

Quantitative Skills: Algebra, Probability and Statistics:Data Trends, Units and Unit Conversions, Problem Solving:Equations, Estimation, Spreadsheets, Geometry and Trigonometry:Cubes and Rectangular Solids, Graphs
Software: Microsoft Excel
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change:Impacts of climate change, Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change, Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy, Gravity, Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics, Environmental Geology, Environmental Science:Sustainability, Natural Hazards, Global Change and Climate:Sea Level Change, Climate Change:Impacts of climate change
Grade Level: College Upper (15-16)
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GETSI Developed This material was developed and reviewed through the GETSI curricular materials development process.
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Unit 4: The Magic of Geophysical Inversion
Lee Slater, Rutgers University-Newark
This unit introduces the student to the concept of geophysical inversion, which is the process of estimating the geophysical properties of the subsurface from the geophysical observations. The basic mechanics of ...

Quantitative Skills: Models and Modeling
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Exploration Methods:Electrical Conductivity/Resistivity, Environmental Science:Water Quality and Quantity:Surface Water , Wetlands, Point Source Pollution, Environmental Science:Waste:Waste Solid :Landfills, Environmental Science:Sustainability, Ecosystems, Chemistry:Environmental Chemistry, Physics:Other Sciences:Environmental Science
Grade Level: College Lower (13-14):College Introductory
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Unit 2: Global Sea-Level Response to Temperature Changes: Temperature and Altimetry Data
Bruce Douglas, Indiana University-Bloomington; Susan Kaspari, Central Washington University
What is the contribution of seawater thermal expansion to recent sea-level rise? In this unit, students create time-series graphs of global averaged sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) data spanning 1880–2017 ...

Quantitative Skills: Algebra, Probability and Statistics:Data Trends:Curve Fitting/Regression, Problem Solving:Equations, Estimation, Spreadsheets, Graphs
Software: Microsoft Excel
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change:Impacts of climate change, Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change, Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy, Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards, Global Change and Climate:Sea Level Change, Climate Change:Impacts of climate change, Environmental Science:Global Change and Climate:Climate Change
Grade Level: College Upper (15-16)
On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Collection This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Activities collection.
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GETSI Developed This material was developed and reviewed through the GETSI curricular materials development process.
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Unit 2: Examining the Distribution of Mass Wasting Events
Bobak Karimi, Wilkes Community College; Stephen Hughes, University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez
What factors contribute to the distribution patterns of mass wasting events? In this unit, students will use a frequency-ratio method, one of the most common quantitative methods used in the statistical analysis of ...

Quantitative Skills: Algebra, Models and Modeling, Probability and Statistics:Correlation, Problem Solving:Equations, Logarithms/Exponential Functions:Logarithms
Software: GIS:ArcGIS
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy
Grade Level: College Upper (15-16)
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3D View from a Drone | Make a 3D Model From Your Photos
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Using cameras mounted to drones, students will design and construct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform in a process called structure from motion (SfM). This activity has both a hands-on component (collecting data with the drone) and a computer-based component (creating the 3-dimensional model).___________________Drones can take photos that can be analyzed later. By planning ahead to have enough overlap between photos, you take those individual photos and make a 3-dimensional image!In this activity, you guide the students to identify an outcrop or landform to study later or over repeat visits. They go through the process to plan, conduct, and analyze an investigation to help answer their science question.The Challenge: Design and conduct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform, then analyze the image and interpret the resulting 3-d image.For instance they might wish to study a hillside that has been changed from a previous forest fire. How is the hillside starting to shift after rainstorms or snows? Monitoring an area over many months can lead to discoveries about how the erosional processes happen and also provide homeowners, park rangers, planners, and others valuable information to take action to stabilize areas to prevent landslides.

Quantitative Skills: Gathering Data
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy, Geoscience
Grade Level: Middle (6-8), High School (9-12)
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Visualizing Relationships with Data: Exploring plate boundaries with Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and GPS Data in the Western U.S. & Alaska | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium; Becca Walker, Mt San Antonio College
Learners use the GPS Velocity Viewer, or the included map packet to visualize relationships between earthquakes, volcanoes, and plate boundaries as a jigsaw activity.

Quantitative Skills: Models and Modeling, Vectors and Matrices, Estimation
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy, Geoscience:Geology:Tectonics, Geoscience, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards:Earthquakes, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards
Grade Level: Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)
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Teleconnections
Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia; Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Ecosystems can be influenced by teleconnections, in which meteorological, societal, and/or ecological phenomenon link remote regions via cause and effect relationships. Because it is difficult to predict how ...

Quantitative Skills: Models and Modeling, Probability and Statistics, Graphs
Software: R
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climatology :El Nino/La Nina, Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change:Impacts of climate change, Biology:Ecology, Environmental Science:Global Change and Climate:El Nino, Climate Change:Impacts of climate change, Environmental Science:Ecosystems:Ecology, Environmental Science
Grade Level: College Upper (15-16), Graduate/Professional
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Episodic tremor and slip: The Case of the Mystery Earthquakes | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium
Earthquakes in western Washington and Oregon are to be expected—the region lies in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Offshore, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate subducts under the North American plate, from northern California to British Columbia. The region, however, also experiences exotic seismicity— Episodic Tremor and Slip (ETS).In this lesson, your students study seismic and GPS data from the region to recognize a pattern in which unusual tremors--with no surface earthquakes--coincide with jumps of GPS stations. This is ETS. Students model ductile and brittle behavior of the crust with lasagna noodles to understand how properties of materials depend on physical conditions. Finally, they assemble their knowledge of the data and models into an understanding of ETS in subduction zones and its relevance to the millions of residents in Cascadia.

Quantitative Skills: Vectors and Matrices, Arithmetic/Computation, Graphs
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodesy, Seismology, Geoscience:Geology:Tectonics, Geoscience:Oceanography:Marine Hazards, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards:Earthquakes, Coastal Hazards:Tsunami, Environmental Science:Natural Hazards
Grade Level: Middle (6-8), High School (9-12), College Lower (13-14)
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Lake Ice Phenology Module
This module was initially developed by Carey, C.C., J.L. Klug, and D.C. Richardson. 1 April 2015. Project EDDIE: Lake Ice Phenology. Project EDDIE Module 1, Version 1: cemast.illinoisstate.edu/data-for-students/modules/ice-phenology.shtml. Module development was supported by NSF DEB 1245707.
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 ...

Quantitative Skills: Probability and Statistics, Spreadsheets, Graphs
Software: Microsoft Excel
Subject: Geoscience: Geoscience:Atmospheric Science:Climate Change:Global change modeling, Impacts of climate change, Environmental Science:Global Change and Climate:Climate Change:Global change modeling, Impacts of climate change
Grade Level: College Lower (13-14), College Upper (15-16)
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