GeoCode: Seismic Hazards
The Seismic Hazards Module prompts students to investigate the hazards and risk of earthquakes in California and the surrounding region. To do this students integrate science practices with computational thinking to produce data visualizations and simulations of land movement along the plate boundary in California, of how land movement causes earthquakes, and of how deformation build-up poses risks to people and their communities.
GeoCode: Seismic Hazards Open Novice Open Resource The Seismic Hazards Module prompts students to investigate the hazards and risk of earthquakes in California and the surrounding region. To do this students integrate science practices with computational thinking to produce data visualizations and simulations of land movement along the plate boundary in California, of how land movement causes earthquakes, and of how deformation build-up poses risks to people and their communities. Supporting teacher resources include Introduction to Assessing Seismic Hazards and Risk with Code A summary of the over rationale, approach, and content within the module. Teaching with Online Materials Information about using computer-based curricula. Student Learning Goals for Assessing Seismic Hazards and Risk with Code A reference for the scientific ideas, computational concepts, and student learning goals. Standards Alignment for Assessing Seismic Hazards and Risk with Code NGSS and CS alignments Seismic Hazards Module Code Cheatsheet A quick-glance guide of exemplar code for each GeoCoder interactive. Objectives: Discover the relationship between friction, rate of plate motion, deformation build up and earthquakes. Explain that earthquakes naturally occur when land deformation around a fault reaches a breaking point and the built-up deformation is released. Identify ground shaking and ground rupture as the primary hazards associated with earthquakes that have the potential to cause harm. Explain that humans have built communities around faults where the earthquake cycle is actively occurring. Determine that people and surrounding environments will be impacted by earthquake hazards. Use code to create simulations to investigate and explain how plate speed and friction influence earthquake occurrence. Use code to create data visualizations to analyze the daily displacement of GPS as well as the trend in GPS velocities around seismically active tectonic boundaries. Hypothesize how deformation build-up can be used to represent earthquake likelihood and aid in forecasting future probability of earthquake hazards and risks. Use code to calculate and visualize future likelihood of earthquake hazards and risks for specific locations. Explain uncertainty involved in predicting the location and timing of earthquakes based on historical earthquake data. Explain how future risks related to earthquake hazards are based on variability in the amount of deformation build-up before an earthquake, the amount of friction between the land, and where communities are located in relation to the fault. Use code to create a deformation build-up data visualization to estimate the likelihood of impact of an earthquake for specific locations around a fault. Use code to investigate different earthquake cycle scenarios and explain the likelihood of a large earthquake occurring based on the simulation outcomes. We encourage the reuse and dissemination of the material on this site as long as attribution is retained. To this end the material on this site, unless otherwise noted, is offered under Creative Commons Attribution ( CC BY 4.0 ) license