Bruce Douglas

Unit 4: Measuring Ice Mass Changes: Vertical Bedrock GPS part of Understanding Our Changing Climate
This unit shows how GPS records of bedrock surface elevation may be used to monitor snow and ice loading/unloading on decadal and annual time scales. Students calculate secular trends in the GPS time series and ...

Unit 1: Climate Change and Sea Level: Who Are the Stakeholders? part of Understanding Our Changing Climate
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 ...

Unit 3: Global Sea-Level Response to Ice Mass Loss: GRACE and InSAR data part of Understanding Our Changing Climate
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 ...

Unit 5: Societal Implications of Climate Change: Stakeholder Report part of Understanding Our Changing Climate
Sea-level rise due to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets and ocean thermal expansion has significant societal and economic consequences. In this final unit, students prepare a summary of the impacts of sea ...

Unit 3: Monitoring groundwater storage with GPS vertical position part of Measuring Water Resources
This unit shows how GPS records of surface elevation can be used to monitor groundwater changes. Students calculate secular trends in the GPS time series and then use the original and detrended records to identify ...

Unit 4: Water budget assessment of a California drought part of Measuring Water Resources
The California Drought of 2012–2016 had significant social and economic consequences. This final unit focuses on this drought as a case study for measuring the hydrologic system so that we can better understand ...

Unit 2: Characterizing groundwater storage with well and GRACE data part of Measuring Water Resources
This unit provides students with experience analyzing traditional (depth to water table measured in a well) and geodetic: GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) data for monitoring changes in groundwater ...

Unit 1: Introduction to the hydrologic cycle and stakeholder analysis part of Measuring Water Resources
This unit introduces the hydrological cycle to provide context for the module as a whole. It particularly focuses on those portions of the hydrological cycle that take place on land and that form the basis for ...

Measuring Water Resources part of Measuring Water Resources
Measuring water resources such as groundwater and snowpack is challenging, but the advent of satellite gravity measurements and hydrologic GPS applications can augment traditional methods. This module gives ...

Imaging Active Tectonics with InSAR and Lidar part of Imaging Active Tectonics
In this module, students use lidar and InSAR data to understand the earthquake cycle, from individual earthquakes to landscape-forming timescales. This is motivated by consideration of earthquake hazards, ...

Unit 4: The phenomenology of earthquakes from InSAR data part of Imaging Active Tectonics
How are different types of earthquakes represented in InSAR data? How can we obtain detailed information on the earthquake source from InSAR data? How well can we resolve those details? In this unit, students ...

Unit 3: How to see an earthquake from space (InSAR) part of Imaging Active Tectonics
How can we tell what style of faulting was responsible for a particular earthquake? Especially in cases where there is limited instrumentation in a region, or where geologists have difficulty accessing the affected ...

Unit 5: How do earthquakes affect society? part of Imaging Active Tectonics
Unit 5 is a final exercise that can start during a lab period and carry over into work outside of the lab time. The project report will test students' abilities to synthesize and apply knowledge related to ...

Unit 1: "If an earthquake happens in the desert and no one lives there, should we care about it?" [How are human-made infrastructure lifelines affected by earthquakes?] part of Imaging Active Tectonics
This unit initiates a discussion about the importance of recognizing faults in relation to modern societal infrastructure. Students consider the types of infrastructure necessary to support a modern lifestyle, ...

Unit 2: Identifying faulting styles, rates and histories through analysis of geomorphic characteristics (Lidar) part of Imaging Active Tectonics
Can active faults be identified remotely, based upon their appearance in the landscape? How can the geomorphic features associated with active faults be used to classify and quantify fault movement? In this unit, ...

Finding the Silver Lining: Positive outcomes from the pivot to virtual for instructor professional development and teaching resources in classroom and field geoscience part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2022:Program:Oral Sessions:Thursday Oral Session B
GETSI (GEodesy Tools for Societal Issues) is an NSF-funded program that develops and disseminates data-rich and societally relevant curriculum for undergraduate field and classroom teaching ...

Context matters: Designing data-rich geodesy teaching materials that get used part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2019:Program:Poster Sessions:Wednesday
GETSI (Geodesy Tools for Societal Issues) project is developing modules that allow undergraduate students to engage in geodetic data analysis relevant to societally important topics of natural hazards, water ...

Data-rich societally-situated undergraduate teaching resources and instructor professional development for geoscience classrooms and field courses part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2018:Program:Poster Sessions:Wednesday
The NSF-funded GEodesy Tools for Societal Issues (GETSI) project is developing teaching resources and instructor professional development opportunities that emphasize a broad range of geodetic methods and data ...

Data-rich societally-relevant undergraduate teaching resources for geoscience classrooms and field courses part of Earth Educators Rendezvous:Previous Rendezvous:Rendezvous 2016:Program:Poster Sessions:Thursday
UNAVCO (NSF's geodetic facility) and partners are developing and disseminating undergraduate teaching resources that feature geodesy data analysis and methods in order to address gaps in available ...

Integrating geodesy technology into undergraduate field education courses part of Rendezvous 2015:Program:Abstracts
Fieldwork is an integral part of the geosciences and there is a longstanding tradition of teaching field methods as part of the undergraduate earth sciences curriculum. As new technology changes the ways in which ...

Bruce Douglas: Using Analyzing High Resolution Topography with TLS and SfM in G429: Field Geology in the Rocky Mountains at Indiana University part of Analyzing High Resolution Topography with TLS and SfM
Success story in introducing geodetic methods to a field camp I first integrated TLS into Indiana University field camp in 2010. It was an experiment as we were not aware of any other undergraduate programs, including both instrument courses or summer field courses, teaching TLS at the time. As always with teaching new topics, there were some challenges in figuring out how to best engage the students and keep them actively involved in the field and how to get data and software to individuals' computers. However their overall enthusiasm for the geophysics learning and their clear progress over just a few days – moving from basic survey design to applying it to different geologic research questions – has been truly satisfying. Since then we have gradually expanded the teaching materials to include more geologic applications and have added a computer cluster to our facilities which has addressed the problems of data uploading via a server and software already loaded and available.

Bruce Douglas: Using Understanding Our Changing Climate in EAS A476 CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE at Indiana University-Bloomington part of Understanding Our Changing Climate
The Understanding Our Changing Climate module provided a deep plunge into sea level change, a subject matter commonly discussed with only passing details of the real societal impact. The GETSI module was used within a climate change science course that covered a traditional range of topics that provided a general framework for the module. The module was taught over a two-week interval following the mid-term exam and provided a change in the routine of the course. The material was presented by a guest faculty member as the module was not part of the normal topics included in the course. The change in classroom routine also allowed for extensive time to be dedicated to the plotting, analysis and interpretation of a range of geodetic data that provided complementary views of ice mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet.

Bruce Douglas: Using Measuring Water Resources with GPS, Gravity, and Traditional Methods in Physical Geology at Indiana University–Bloomington part of Measuring Water Resources
This module was used in an introductory physical geology course with great success despite the fact that it was designed for upper level topical courses. The success was in part a testimony to the ability of the students in the class and their excitement to learn about, and analyze, the various applications of geodetic data sets that they did not know existed. The was amplified when they understood that this data could be used for making critical societal decisions concerning water use and allocation. The students, while initially a bit timid with the use of some of the higher level functions of Excel, became adept at plotting and interpreting the large time series that comprise much of the data included in the module.