Glacier Flow Model and Introduction to Monte Carlo Methods
Dan Morgan, Vanderbilt University
The goal of this assignment is for students to recognize that adding some randomization and "noise" to a model yields different results each time we run the model, and we can pull some useful statistics ...

Stress Map
James Conder, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Use earthquakes from the global CMT catalog to look at crustal stresses in a given region of the Earth. Students will download earthquake data from an online catalog and make 2 tectonic maps. One map is of the ...

Gravity prospecting
James Conder, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Students are given a set of gravity data with the aim of finding high density anomalies in the subsurface. Keywords: Data analysis; inverse modeling

Using Autocorrelation and Cross-correlation to Explore Links Between River Discharge and Regional Climate
Peter Adams, University of Florida
Students conduct autocorrelation and cross-correlation analyses on river discharge and climate indices to test the hypothesis that coastal streams draining mountainous terrain are strong indicators of climatic ...

Volume of oceans, and sea-level variations
Charly Bank, University of Toronto
The activity combines aspects of Earth science (volume of oceans and ice sheets) with calculus (area of a 1x1 degree tile) and Matlab programming. Students calculate the volume of oceans and of ice sheets given the ...

Finite difference modeling of hillslope diffusion
Dylan Mikesell, Boise State University
This activity introduces students to the finite difference solution of the hill-slope diffusion PDE. The students derive partial derivatives from Taylor Series expansions of the 2D topography function z(x,t). After ...

What is the fate of CO2 produced by fossil fuel combustion?
Paul Quay
A box model is used to simulate the build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the industrial era and predict the future increase in atmospheric CO2 levels during the next century.