3D View from a Drone | Make a 3D Model From Your Photos
Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium; Randy Russel, UCAR Science Education Center; David Thesanga, Alexander Dawson School
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.

Economics: Sea level rise
Lea Fortmann, University of Puget Sound
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 ...

Detecting Cascadia's changing shape with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Nancy West, UNAVCO; Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium; David Thesenga, Front Range Community College
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.

Measuring Plate Motion with GPS: Iceland | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Roger Groom, Mt. Tabor Middle School; Cate Fox-Lent, UNAVCO; Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium; Nancy West, Quarter Dome Consulting; David Thesenga, Front Range Community College
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.

Physics: Permafrost
Penny Rowe, NorthWest Research Associates; Steven Neshyba, University of Puget Sound
Students learn what permafrost is, the implications of permafrost thawing due to climate change, and how to calculate heat diffusion through permafrost. Student activities include watching a video about permafrost, ...

Visualizing Relationships with Data: Exploring plate boundaries with Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and GPS Data in the Western U.S. & Alaska | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Ruth Powers, Master Teacher-In-Residence; 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.

Module 3 Sea Ice as an Indicator of Climate Change
Jonathan Cohen, University of Delaware; Matthew Oliver, University of Delaware; Victoria E Simons, University of Delaware
This module focuses on the differences between the Arctic and Antarctic in terms of physical factors like sea ice cover. This is the first polar content-heavy module of the course, and it relies on skills built in ...

Sustainability Metrics
Natalie Hunt, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Sustainability is a complex term applied to many different contexts in a variety of ways. As a result, it can be challenging to determine how sustainable something really is. In this module, students will use an ...

Episodic tremor and slip: The Case of the Mystery Earthquakes | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Roger Groom, Mt. Tabor Middle School; Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium; Herb Dragert, Geological Survey of Canada; Bob Butler, U. Portland; Jenda Johnson, IRIS; Nancy West, Quarter Dome Consulting; David Thesenga, Alexander Dawson School
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.

Nutrient Monitoring in the Chesapeake Bay
Akinyele Oni, Morgan State University; Niangoran Koissi, Morgan State University
The Chesapeake Bay waters receive input from rivers and streams from areas of Washington D.C, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, and some parts of New York and Pennsylvania. Historically, humongous ...