Geological Mapping of a Virtual Landscape part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
This virtual mapping exercise is part video game, part map prediction and interpretation. You will navigate a virtual landscape to "collect" outcrops and their field notes, recording your observations on ...

Karst Hydrogeology and Geomorphology: A virtual field experience using Google Earth, GIS, and TAK part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Students will have the opportunity to select and virtually explore the hydrogeology and geomorphology of a karst landscape using Google Earth (or perhaps Google Mars or Google Moon if they so choose), lidar ...

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.

Feldspar Minerals and Triangle Diagrams part of Introductory Courses:Activities
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students learn how to read a triangle or ternary diagram. They determine physical properties of feldspars and interpret two ...

Measuring the Inclination and Declination of the Earth's magnetic field with a smartphone part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
The poles of the Earth's magnetic field are not precisely aligned with the geographic north and south poles and, in fact, vary continuously. This activity introduces to students the Earth's magnetic ...

Karst Hydrogeology: A virtual field introduction using Google Earth and GIS part of Cutting Edge:Enhance Your Teaching:Teaching with Online Field Experiences:Activities
Students will have the opportunity to select and virtually explore the hydrogeology and geomorphology of a karst landscape using Google Earth, lidar data-sourced DEM(s) and geologic maps, and GIS software (QGIS) ...

Measuring Ground Motion with GPS: How GPS Works part of Geodesy:Activities
With printouts of typical GPS velocity vectors found near different tectonic boundaries and models of a GPS station, demonstrate how GPS work to measure ground motion.GPS velocity vectors point in the direction that a GPS station moves as the ground it is anchored to moves. The length of a velocity vector corresponds to the rate of motion. GPS velocity vectors thus provide useful information for how Earth's crust deforms in different tectonic settings.

Lecture Tutorials for Introductory Physical Geology part of Introductory Courses:Activities
These activities take place in a lecture setting and require ~5-10 minutes to complete. Students apply lecture topics directly to answer questions, interpret maps and photographs, perform calculations, and plot ...

Seafloor Spreading: Bathymetry, Anomalies, and Sediments part of Introductory Courses:Activities
This activity takes place in a laboratory setting and requires ~1.5-2 hours to complete. Students study the bathymetry of the South Atlantic, use magnetic reversals to interpret marine magnetic anomalies, and ...

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 ...