In this unit, students will learn about the dynamic movement of nutrients among and within ecosystems primarily through the reading and discussion of scientific literature. This unit is generally subdivided into three sections: (1) allochthonous inputs (2) the role of organisms in biogeochemical cycles and how ecological theory can be applied to biogeochemistry and (3) how biogeochemical processes can assist in creating solutions for humanity's grand challenges. This unit is designed to provide students with the opportunity to develop their reading and interpretation of scientific literature. Students will also become familiar with the utility of isotopic techniques and their use in biogeochemistry through readings and data analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopic data sets. Chosen scientific articles are provided, each with their own set of reading questions. Additionally, short introductory materials are provided to introduce students to some of the general concepts and processes in the study of biogeochemistry.

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In this week-long unit students will explore Critical Zone function and dynamics as they relate to nutrient cycling in agricultural systems and nutrient pollution into aquatic systems. This unit is generally subdivided into three sections: (1) nutrient pollution (2) agricultural importance and (3) Critical Zone function and dynamics in relation to nutrient cycling. The students will use data sets, interactive activities, primary literature, and videos to allow them to examine the role that the CZ plays and how that role changes with differing land uses. Important present-day topics of food production, clean water, nutrient pollution, and sustainable agriculture are examined using a CZ lens. Students will interact with each other on a variety of scales (individual, small groups, entire class) and using a variety of modes (presentations, written reports, question and answers, and class discussion) in this unit. Additionally, optional activities are provided if lab activities are able to be accommodated. The unit ends with a summative assessment assignment that is based on an innovative call for proposals to combat one of America's most widespread, costly, and challenging environmental problems: nutrient pollution.

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Students select their own set of three stations in an area of interest to them, conduct a strain analysis of the area between the stations, and tie the findings to regional tectonics and societal impacts in a 5 -- 7 minute class presentation. For many students this is their first foray into "research" and can be a powerfully eye-opening and exciting (if intimidating) experience. In larger classes, students can work in pairs to shorten total time needed for presentations. Unit 6, along with exam question/s, is the Summative Assessment for the module.

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Online-ready: The exercise is a final project that can be done remotely, individually or in small online groups. Final presentations could be done in a synchronous class period.

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In this unit, students address the issue of groundwater demands and environmental justice in the arid Southwest, a region with some of the largest percentages of Hispanics and Latinos in the United States. Students discuss the Rule of Capture, the overuse of water resources, and the dwindling supply of groundwater in many parts of the Ogallala Aquifer. Students connect groundwater's role to the hydrological cycle and consider how issues of inequity can occur when groundwater is not properly regulated.

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In this two-day activity, students monitor a simulated evolving volcanic crisis at a convergent plate boundary (Cascadia). Using monitoring data and geologic hazard maps, students make a series of forecasts for the impending eruption and associated risks. By the end of the activity, students will have learned the outcome of the eruption and assess the impacts of the eruption of Mount Rainier on specific locations around the volcano.
This unit is a continuation of Unit 5, in which students analyzed simulated pre-eruption seismic, tilt, and gas emission data. In this, the second day of the simulation, students update their eruption forecasts based on new data (in the prework) and then (in groups in class) by combining information from multiple data sets. In class, each group assesses the vulnerability of one or more assigned locations near Mount Rainier. The exercise culminates with students assessing the impacts of the simulated eruption at their assigned locations.

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Unit 6 covers the preliminary design of a rainwater harvesting unit. Pre-class assignments provide background on rainwater harvesting. An active learning exercise steps student teams through the process of sizing a rainwater harvesting cistern, using water demand estimates from Units 4 and 5. The activity leads into a revision of the water system mind map developed in previous units.

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Unit 7 continues the use of the CME Building Case Study to explore water sustainability in the context of a building. The activity is extended to the catchment level, and a new tool for catchment level storm water management is introduced. Students are exposed in the pre-class assignments to low impact development (LID) and green infrastructure and the EPA National Stormwater Calculator. In class, the central activity is applying the EPA National Stormwater Calculator to evaluate an LID control plan for the CME building case study. The unit brings together concepts from previous units through the use of the calculator. The impact of landscapes, buildings, and other features on storm water runoff is illustrated. And the potential benefit of LID controls is analyzed. The homework assignment engages students in the search for a local green infrastructure site to take a picture and summarize the site in the context of a sustainable site.

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Picture of urban flooding

Provenance: Timothy Swinson https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trapped_woman_on_a_car_roof_during_flash_flooding_in_Toowoomba_2.jpg
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Unit 8 covers the basics of hydroclimatic extreme events with a focus on floods and droughts. Topics include introduction to floods and droughts, impact of urbanization on extremes, how to understand and predict extremes, how to tackle them (management strategies), and elements of urban climate resilience. The teaching strategy is designed with short and divided lectures filled with discussion questions and a group activity. Students will be working with time series flow data for statistical analysis of extreme events.

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Unit 9 is a group activity that requires students to apply the material they have learned in Units 1 -- 8 in an urban water system design project. Students are presented with a scenario and are required to select options to design a feasible and sustainable urban water system that considers the triple bottom line in their design. The design project requires that students consider hydrologic processes (e.g., evapotranspiration, runoff) in designing outdoor landscaping and amount of pervious and impervious area. Students also consider indoor water use efficiency and other methods (e.g., rain barrels) to reduce water consumption. Students are also asked to consider the connection between urban development and atmospheric processes. Students apply systems thinking by connecting hydrologic and atmospheric processes with the human built system. Student groups present their design to the class and assess each other's designs. These activities can be used as a summative assessment for the entire module.

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Following lecture presentation of classification schemes and environments of formation for non-siliciclastic rocks, students perform a sequence of two activities (one in the lab, one in the field) designed to guide them from theoretical understanding to practical application. In the lab component, students are presented with twenty hand samples and twenty rock names and/or descriptions. Their task is to examine the samples, match the descriptions with the proper rocks, and propose a likely environment of formation for each sample. Included among the samples in the lab component are carbonates and cherts similar to those encountered in the field component, which examines a local outcrop exposing four successive carbonate formations in the Middle Paleozoic Helderberg Group. In the field component, students are first asked to differentiate between successive formations using lithology, sedimentary structures, and fossil assemblages. They then determine the probable sedimentary environment for each formation, and interpret the facies succession preserved in the outcrop to reconstruct a small portion of local geologic history. In both field and lab components, students are encouraged to work in small groups to develop their initial responses without instructor input. This arrangement ultimately improves both student understanding of the material and confidence in their own interpretations.

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Magmatic differentiation is an important concept in the geology curriculum. Students are generally introduced to magmatic differentiation in the introductory course, whereas the details are typically developed in mineralogy and petrology courses. In particular, students often struggle to understand the processes of fractional crystallization.

Fractional crystallization by gravity settling can be illustrated using a model magma chamber consisting of M&M's��. In this model, each major cation (e.g., Si, Ti, Al, Fe, Mg, Ca, Na, K) is represented by a different color M&M��; other kinds of differently colored or shaped pieces could also be used. Appropriate numbers of each color M&M�� are combined to approximate the cation proportions of a basaltic magma; this is the "parental magma". The M&M's�� are then placed in a group on a tabletop to form a magma chamber. Students then fractionate the magma in ten crystallization steps. In each step the M&M's�� are moved to the bottom of the magma chamber forming a series of cumulus layers; the M&M's�� are removed in proportions that are identical to those of the stoichiometric proportions of cations in the crystallizing minerals (e.g., olivine, pyroxene, feldspars, quartz, magnetite, ilmenite). Students observe the changing cation composition (proportions of colors of M&M's��) in the cumulus layers and in the magma chamber and graph the results using spreadsheet software. Students classify the cumulates and resulting liquid after each crystallization step, and they compare the model system with natural magmatic systems (e.g., absence of important fractionating phases, volatiles). Students who have completed this exercise demonstrate increased understanding of fractionation processes exhibit greater familiarity with mineral stoichiometry, classification, solid-solution in minerals, element behavior (e.g., incompatibility), and chemical variation diagrams.

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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 phenomena. Students must load the data, conduct analyses, and plot the results by writing an efficient MATLAB script, and must "publish" their code into a well-organized, well-commented, .pdf document (or .html on a website).

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The student compiles oil field well data, including spatial locations and digital well logs, for analysis of subsurface, oil reservoir stratigraphy and lithology using computer spatial technologies software, Geoplus Petra. The students create well log cross sections, make lithologic picks, construct structure and isopach maps, and evaluate lithologic properties, including gross reservoir quality from petrophysical logs. These data are used to interpret depositional environment of the subject formation and make predictions for well bore perforations for oil production. The key value of the exercise is an introduction to the use of computer software to analyze geological data, guided by sedimentologic and stratigraphic insights, and make predictions for resource exploitation.

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How can we use data to improve ecological forecasts?
To be useful for management, ecological forecasts need to be both accurate enough for managers to be able to rely on them for decision-making andinclude a representation of forecast uncertainty, so managers can properly interpret the probability of future events. To improve forecast accuracy, we can update forecasts with observational data once they become available, a process known asdata assimilation. Recent improvements in environmental sensor technology and an increase in the number of sensors deployed in ecosystems have resulted in an increase in the availability of data for assimilation to help develop and improve forecasts for natural resource management. In this module, students will develop an ecosystem model of primary productivity, use the model to generate forecasts, and then explore how assimilating different types of data at different temporal frequencies (e.g., daily, weekly) affects forecast accuracy. Finally, students will assimilate different types of data into forecasts and examine how data assimilation affects water resource management decisions.

In this session we will examine how to utilize Dynamic Digital Maps (DDMs) in undergraduate petrology courses to bring inaccessible and exciting volcanic field areas to the students in the classroom and to engage the students in authentic research experiences. A DDM is a stand-alone "presentation manager" computer program that contains interactive maps, analytical data, digital images and movies. They are essentially complete geologic maps in digital format, available on CD-ROM and on line. We have developed two different kinds of exercises that use DDMs to provide field-based context for undergraduate research projects in petrology. In one, the students use the DDM of the Tatara-San Pedro volcanic complex of the Andes Mountains of central Chile to develop a group research poster on part of the volcano's evolution, to present to the class, modeled after what would be presented at a national meeting. The second exercise focuses on the Springville Volcanic field, where the students try to understand the magma evolution using both field relations and quantitative modeling skills.
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Read a complete description of how dynamic digital maps work, with more ideas for the classroom. (from Teaching with Data, Simulations and Models)

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Because of increased variability in populations, communities, and ecosystems due to land use and climate change, there is a pressing need to know the future state of ecological systems across space and time. Ecological forecasting is an emerging approach which provides an estimate of the future state of an ecological system with uncertainty, allowing society to preemptively prepare for fluctuations in important ecosystem services. However, forecasts must be effectively designed and communicated to those who need them to realize their potential for protecting natural resources.
In this module, students will explore real ecological forecast visualizations, identify ways to represent uncertainty, make management decisions using forecast visualizations and learn decision support techniques. Lastly, students will then customize a forecast visualization for a specific forecast user's decision needs.
The overarching goal of this module is for students to understand how forecasts are connected to decision-making of forecast users, or the managers, policy-makers, and other members of society who use forecasts to inform decision-making.

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This exercise is part of a sequence of exercises to help students understand single and multiple aquifer tests. In class, students will receive data from pumping tests at University of Minnesota's hydrogeology field site. Instead of using commercial software, students will create interactive modeling tools to facilitate curve matching and to collaborate on understanding aquifer tests at different scales using different methods. The approaches used in this exercise can be extended to develop models to compare single and multiple aquifer tests using different approaches.

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This computer-based assignment forces students to compare and contrast integral and differential forms of the conservation of mass equation, as well as analytical and numerical approaches to solution. Students are given a text description of a simple environmental problem (a conservative tracer diffusing in a one-dimensional system with no-flux boundaries) and are then required to first write equations that describe the system and then implement these equations in an Excel spreadsheet or Matlab m-file. Students then use their spreadsheets/m-files to compare different solution methods and must communicate these results in short text answers.

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Students will predict how many amusement parks are in their state. They will then analyze census data on the numbers of amusement parks in all 50 states in 2016. (Data in this activity do not include the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico.) Then students will write numbers as fractions and create a visual model of the data.

This activity uses field measurements and GIS to estimate the volume of water in the form of snow in a field site.

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