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 ...

Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics
Roger Groom, Mt. Tabor Middle School; Andy Newman, Georgia Institute of Technology; Shelley E Olds, EarthScope Consortium; Cate Fox-Lent, UNAVCO; Nancy West, Quarter Dome Consulting; David Thesenga, Front Range Community College
Students analyze data to study the motion of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. From GPS data, students detect relative motion between the plates in the San Andreas fault zone--with and without earthquakes. To get to that discovery, they use physical models to understand the architecture of GPS, from satellites to sensitive stations on the ground. They learn to interpret time series data collected by stations (in the spreading regime of Iceland), to cast data as horizontal north-south and east-west vectors, and to add those vectors head-to-tail.Students then apply their skills and understanding to data in the context of the strike-slip fault zone of a transform plate boundary. They interpret time series plots from an earthquake in Parkfield, CA to calculate the resulting slip on the fault and (optionally) the earthquake's magnitude.

Frequency of Large Earthquakes
Jennifer Pickering
Using the IRIS Earthquake Browser tool, students gather data to support a claim about how many large (Mw 8+) earthquakes will happen globally each year. This activity provides scaffolded experience downloading data and manipulating data within a spreadsheet.

Water Quality Module
Castendyk, D.; Gibson, C.
Water quality is a critical concept for undergraduate students studying Earth Sciences, Biology, and Environmental Sciences. Many of these students will be asked to assess the impacts of a proposed anthropogenic ...

Cross-Scale Interactions
Carey, C.C.; Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia; Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Environmental phenomena are often driven by multiple factors that interact across different spatial and temporal scales. In freshwater lakes and reservoirs worldwide, phytoplankton blooms are increasing in ...

Prairie Eco Services
Kelly Knight, Houston Community College
As densely populated urban areas continue to expand, human activity is removing much-needed greenspaces from our communities; in turn, we are also removing critical buffers that are needed to combat air and water ...

Teleconnections
Farrell, K.J.; Cayelan Carey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Kaitlin Farrell, University of Georgia
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 ...

Lake Mixing Module
C.C. Carey; J.L. Klug; R.L. Fuller
Stratified lakes exhibit vertical gradients in organisms, nutrients, and oxygen, which have important implications for ecosystem structure and functioning. Mixing disrupts these gradients by redistributing these ...

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 ...

Spectral Seismology Module
Soule, D. S.; M. Weirathmuller; G. Kroeger; R. Darner Gougis
This module that is based on a conceptual presentation of waveforms and filters. "Spectral Seismology" will engage students using seismic and acoustic signals available through Incorporated Research ...