Lectures which precede this activity cover the different fossil groups, time period & depositional environment of the localities, as when as basic ecology & biodiversity. During class, the students go on a field trip to fossil localities to collect their data. Back in class, the students use the primary literature, fossil id books and web-based resources like Paleontology Portal to identify their fossil organisms. They perform a quantitative analysis of biodiversity, and reconstruct the paleocommunity based on their data and the literature. The end product is a scientific-style paper.

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In this activity students use published data from the Massachusetts Military Reservation to observe and predict mass transport parameters.

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In-service teachers learn about environmental geology and how to teach earth science using outdoor activities and resources near their schools.

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These assignments represent scaffolding for a self-directed final project.

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The project is to bring together what students learned through lectures, and weekly exercises and lab practices and to apply remote sensing technology to your interested application area. The objective of the project is to extract land cover information for an area covering the Amherst area. Students are required to classify the land cover of the selected area into 3-5 classes such as vegetation cover, water body (lake or reservoir or river) and settlements (residential and commercial landuse). The classification should be conducted by using both images with spatial resolution of 30 and 15 meters). And then they need to compare the accuracy of classifications from using images at different spatial resolutions. This project provides students with a very useful experience of extracting land cover information from satellite images.

In this activiy when property rights are absent participants have financial incentive to take what they can get immediatly as opposed to waiting until the resource is more valuable. Adding strong property rights provides the proper finanacial incentives for students to wait to extract the resource when it is most valuable.

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Students must be able to search for, find, download, display, query and map hurricane and other relevant GIS data.
Hurricane data spans 1851-2008 and is from: http://www.fgdl.org/metadataexplorer/explorer.jsp
Countries data is from: http://www.diva-gis.org
Learning outcomes: For students be able to successfully use GIS data to answer a basic spatial research question. Many skills are required for this seemingly simple question: creating a correct query that matches the data, understanding hurricane and weather patterns for example.

Preparation for this activity is done during the class discussion on current events. Prior to this class, students are required to look through the newspapers and browse the internet for a list of events. During the class, student groups share their list with the class. Each group then categorizes the larger list. This discussion is extremely useful for shedding light on the connectivity and complexity of human relationships from the individual to nations. Students are then asked to propose why these current events are occurring. For example, immigrant students in my course discuss scarcity of resources leading to conflict and civil war in their home countries. Other students will bring the idea of global economy and the effects of globalization on their cultures. The discussions that emerge from this activity are significant for all students involved. In addition to increased student awareness, this activity underscores the importance of integrated learning. Uses geophysics to solve problems in other fields

In this structural geology activity, students are faced with a problem whose solution requires an understanding of faults. Using inductive reasoning and a set of wood blocks, students discover a general rule about faults and then apply that rule to the specific problem.

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Please refer to attached document.
Uses online and/or real-time data
Addresses student fear of quantitative aspect and/or inadequate quantitative skills

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A few PowerPoint or Keynote slides are used to set the historical context of the project and to introduce the general problem (see "Presentation Files" and "Instructors Notes" below). Bouncing a rubber ball in class from differing heights above the floor, and letting students see and hear the effects of differing travel times, helps students understand that longer travel time in a reflection experiment indicates a deeper reflector. The relevant parts of YouTube videos are shown (see links under "Other Materials" below). Have the students measure the time interval between the explosion and the impact a few times while showing the videos. One of the correspondents talks about (and attempts to show) how the bridge vibrated after the explosion.
Pass out the worksheet and the raw seismograms related to the Hoan demolition experiment. Then, with a copy of the seismograms projected onto the screen, hold an initial discussion of how to interpret the graphics: note the time scale, discuss what the different wave amplitudes mean, and so on. Then cluster into groups of 2-4 students and have each group try to "pick" the first arrivals of [1] the explosion-induced direct wave, [2] the impact-induced direct wave, and [3] the corresponding reflected waves. Depending on the type of students involved (intro non-geologists, intro geology/geophysics, geophysics), the teacher can provide more or less assistance in picking the arrivals of the direct and reflected waves.
Work through the quantitative material on the worksheet. Questions about how to handle uncertainty always occur, and if the students do not admit to having questions about this the teacher should ask them how they handle uncertainties. In a nutshell, the resultant uncertainty associated with the sum or difference in two numbers are the sum of the two uncertainties. For example, (23 �� 2) + (14 �� 1) = 37 �� 3. The resultant uncertainty associated with the product of two numbers can be estimated with the sum of the fractional (or percentage) uncertainties. For example, the percentage uncertainty of 23 �� 2 is (2/23) or 8.7% and the percentage uncertainty of 14 �� 1 is (1/14) or 7.1 %, so (23 �� 2) x (14 �� 1) = 322 �� 51 because (8.7% + 7.1%) = 15.8% and 15.8% of 322 is ~51. For a nice summary of simple uncertainty calculations, refer to http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys273/uncert/uncert.html or http://webpages.ursinus.edu/lriley/ref/unc/unc.html, or the statistics resources on the SERC website.
When the worksheets are completed, recap the experiment and compare the results with a map of crustal thicknesses for North America (e.g., Braile, 1989, Fig. 23B). Finally, it is nice to have the students evaluate the experience as homework.

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Activity involves field data collection with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) unit to identify the location of an underground storage tank (UST). Data collection grid could also be collected and mapped with GPS unit. Actual field data are included with the exercise if field data collection is not an option. The activity gives students hands-on experience with data analysis / interpretation and mapping of subsurface storage tanks that are frequently associated with environmental contamination. This activity uses online and/or real-time data and uses geophysics to solve problems in other fields.

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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 deriving the finite difference solution to this PDE, students implement this solution in MATLAB to model hillslope evolution in time using constant material properties and time steps.

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Bathymetry and topography are used to identify and compare glacial and volcanic features of the Sand Point area, Alaska.

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An example set of tasks and questions for the first field trip of a 300-level Sedimentology and Stratigraphy course.

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This is a short and simple exercise requiring students to examine and compare different crystal shapes. Cardboard models and wooden blocks are used as ideal representations of real crystals. Students examine the representations and determine what shape properties they have in common. They then discuss what it means if crystals of different minerals share some shape properties.

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To complete this assignment students need to choose a group and decide who will write each section. They should also agree on a timeframe which will allow them to complete the assignment in the time provided. One student is expected to take the lead in assembling the final document. Students are expected to edit themselves the stay within the page limit, as they will find a vast amount of information. Students may work alone or in groups of less than five, but are still required to include all the necessary information.

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In this module, students calculate the pressure at the depth of compensation along a cross section of North America.

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In this module, students examine Archimede's Principle in general and as it applies to Isostacy.

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Students are asked to numerically and then analytically determine the relations governing the depth of compensation.

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