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

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This Lecture Tutorial worksheet guides students through thinking about the effects humans have on
infiltration, and how that effects the duration and severity of floods. It is designed to be used
in groups after a brief lecture introducing surface and ground water flow into a stream.

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SSAC Geology of National Parks module/Geology of National Parks course. Students calculate probabilities using USGS hydrograph data, a spreadsheet of daily stage heights, and the COUNTIF function.

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This assignment asks students to do a flood frequency analysis to determine the size and stage of various floods and determine if the town of Crawford, OH is likely to be flooded or not. Outcomes: learn to work with quantitative data, learn to use Excel, be able to use USGS data.

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This lab activity has students use stream discharge data obtained from the USGS Water Resources Division web site in order to calculate recurrence intervals for a local stream. Using the recurrence data generated, the students then make recommendations to the residents of a local town as to what they might do to reduce their loss from the effects of frequent flooding in their community.

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Students calculate recurrence intervals for various degrees of flooding based on historical data. Students then do a risk assessment for the surrounding community.

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In this lab, students learn about four different types of flood: flash floods, regional floods, storm surges, and tsunami. They then explore the human experience of flooding and who is impacted the most by flooding in general and locally in the state of WA.

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In this several week-long introductory geoscience project, students evaluate the potential for flooding in the local region. Students visit the site during the first week of the semester as part of a "Walk in the Watershed" and make observations in order to generate hypotheses about the processes that shape the landscape and control the movement of water. During a later lab period, students return to the same site to determine stream discharge using the flotation and current meter methods and compare and contrast the results from the two methods. In addition, students in the different laboratory sections use their data to compare and contrast reasons for why discharge may have changed over the course of the day or week during the following class meeting. As an in-class exercise, students examine an annual hydrograph and then predict the weather that generated the observed stream discharge. Students test their hypotheses by analyzing precipitation data available on-line in order to correlate flood events with storm types or other causes for major discharge events. Next, students examine historical flood and discharge data of the local stream available on-line at http://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/ as a homework assignment. In addition to calculating the recurrence interval and probability of occurrence for each event, students determine the discharge and stage of a 1-, 10-, 50-, and 100-year flood, create a rating curve, and generate a floodway map for each of these events. Subsequently, students revisit the site during lab and locate the boundaries of these flood events. Students will make recommendations for building a house in the region based on their analyses.

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In this lab, students measure a topographic and geologic cross-section across a floodplain by simple surveying and auguring techniques.

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In this GIS-enhanced lab, students measure a topographic and geologic cross-section across a floodplain by simple surveying and auguring techniques.

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Students explore the USGS water website to identify the location of stream gauges on the Minnesota River and the types of data that can be retrieved from the website. They determine which data to download based on the area of interest in the exercise (St. Peter, MN) and import historical flood data into MS Excel. The students use a spreadsheet to rank each flood and calculate a recurrence interval for a given flood, then estimate the discharge and stage of the 100-year flood in St. Peter, MN. The final task is to establish a flood hazard zone on a topographic map of the city of St. Peter. Note: this exercise can be applied to almost any non-dammed river with two or more USGS gaging stations on it. Go to http://water.usgs.gov and select your state from the pull-down menu to view an interactive map of your state's rivers and gaging station locations.

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This exercise looks at the dollar losses and deaths caused by flooding in the US, and at the causes of, and relationships between the two trends.

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This is the data collection portion of a semester-long project. Before this lab, students will have graphed discharge data for one previous water year, graphed similar data collected by classes during a previous year, written one-page explanations of the techniques that they will be using, and speculated about the results they expect to get. After this lab, their data will be shared with other lab sections, which will have collected similar data at other sites along the same river. Each research group will present their preliminary data to the class during a later lab meeting, and the class will discuss how the different types of data relate to one another. The project culminates in a final paper (one per research group).

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This is a field trip designed to connect labs on rocks and minerals with the bedrock geology of a group research site. Students locate themselves on topographic maps using GPS and the topography they observe, examine igneous and sedimentary rocks, and sketch igneous and sedimentary rock textures. The field trip gives the students an opportunity to review some common minerals before being confronted with a large number of rocks in boxes.

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This is a homework assignment used as preparation for a group research project. Students graph annual discharge data from a local river by hand, and compare the discharge patterns from the stream above a reservoir with those below the dam. This exercise gives students practice graphing a small amount of data by hand, and gets them thinking about ways graphs can be used to help interpret data.

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Most of this lab is a fairly traditional rocks-in-boxes lab on identification of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. At the end of the lab, students practice identifying real rocks in the campus rock garden, which includes boulders of most of the bedrock units within our county. Students use GPS units to find the samples to identify (so that they can explore while the instructor answers other student questions). At each boulder, students identify the rock type, the minerals present, and the rock textures. The lab handout includes a simplified geologic map of an area that they previously visited on a field trip, and which they will use later in the semester in discussions of water samples that they collect.

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This group research project serves as the focus for our introductory Earth Systems Science classes. Each of four to six lab sections of 15-25 students collect discharge, sediment load, and water chemistry data from a different site along a local river, and compare their data to that collected in previous years and at other sites along the river. The project incorporates topographic map reading and graphing as well as collecting and analyzing data, and presenting the results in oral and written form. Labs on rocks and minerals use samples from the project area to encourage students to make connections between the solid Earth and surface processes.

Each component of the Florida River Project is described below, with a link to the activity sheet and related files.

Topographic Maps: Integrated Florida River project
Florida River Project: Minerals in the field
Florida River Project: Sedimentary and metamorphic rocks lab
Florida River Project: Plotting discharge data
Plotting Florida River Data Using Excel
Florida River Project: Measuring discharge, sediment, and water chemistry

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The Florida River Project is a semester-long project involving (1) an individual project in which students pose a scientific question and use existing data to test their hypothesis, and (2) a group project in which students collect and present data associated with stream monitoring.

Outcomes of the individual project include:
- Practice applying the process of science
- Graphing and interpreting data
- Making an argument supported by quantitative evidence.
- Communicating a scientific argument in writing.
- Supporting a scientific argument using appropriate formats (especially graphs and tables)

Outcomes of the group project include:
- Collecting field data (discharge, sediment load, water chemistry)
- Presenting data orally.
- Discussing preliminary interpretations of data.

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The purpose of the exercise is to familiarize igneous petrology students with flow properties of lava, especially viscosity, and to have them consider effects on viscosity due to temperature, crystallinity and volatile content. The problem uses data from an actual eruption.

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This exercise is intended to help link the observations of water and sediment
motion that student made in the laboratory flume with the theory discussed in
lecture. Students use the measurements made to ask some basic questions about what happened in the flume as the discharge was varied by a factor of two.
Designed for a geomorphology course

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