Students load a topographic overlay into Google Earth. Rather than working with paper maps they will learn to make observations and collect data directly from digital maps, in this case while learning about fluvial systems. The lab is designed to introduce student to the power and usefulness of freely available software and data found on the internet.
Designed for a geomorphology course

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This is an in-class exercise on fluvial landforms and topographic map reading. Students work in groups on a series of "classic" geomorphic maps and answer a suite of questions. The questions are designed to cover basic identification up to queries on chronology, process, role of climate and substrate, etc. After going through the classic maps, we pull out local topographic maps and find many of the same features and discuss how they relate to the local geology and glacial history.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Has minimal/no quantitative component

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This exercise is intended to give student experience using field data they collected to analyze the fluvial processes that occur in Redwood Creek, and the landforms that result.
Designed for a geomorphology course

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The lab starts with a short lecture on the scientific method, after which students observe the results of a flume run that includes skeletal clasts. They form hypotheses about how bone clasts (or any clast for that matter) move and are deposited by a flow, then the students test their hypotheses by running a flume trial. The hypothesis tests take place in small groups (3-5 students), and the lab ends with homework where students use the information they learned from their hypothesis tests to interpret a fossil assemblage. As such, this is a wonderful activity for introductory geology classes, could be used effectively with minor adjustments for advanced paleontology, taphonomy, and forensic physical anthropology classes.

Students should download Google Earth and the kmz file prior to class if using personal computers, otherwise both should be downloaded on class computers. In class time is one lab period, with some out of class time; ~6 hrs total.

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The Fold Analysis Challenge (FAC) uses Google Earth and a customized Google Earth interface to help students visualize the orientations of eroded dipping sedimentary layers and to visualize the geometries of folds in layered rocks. The FAC uses spectacularly exposed layers at Sheep Mountain, Wyoming and takes students through a variety of activities to help them visualize the shape and orientation of the fold structure responsible for the patterns that can be seen in Google Earth at Sheep Mountain. After working with Sheep Mountain, students apply what they have learned to interpret other fold structures in the Bighorn Basin. Once students have become adept at visualizing dipping layers and folds, they are ready to use the same strategies for visualizing fold structures anywhere in the world where they are well exposed in Google Earth.

Provenance: Kristen St. John, James Madison University
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Students will map an overturned fold with axial planar cleavage and parasitic folds using hand samples set up around a classroom/outdoors.

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Students explore the geometric relationship between bedding/cleavage intersections and fold axes for axial planar, fanning, and transecting cleavage.

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In this activity students analyze the rheologic and structural properties of various foods (everything from pudding to white bread) and think about how they expect them to behave under lateral pressure and how they will affect each other. They design experiments, run the experiments and then do lab write-ups. Depending on your emphasis, you can use this to help teach folding mechanics, rheology, why beds deform the way they do, decollements (pudding works great), deformation mechanisms, folding and even more. It is a single lecture activity, though the lead-in lecture and activity and clean-up take about 40-50 minutes.

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In this psychology real-life investigation, students investigate the food on their plates, identify the source location of the foods they consume on a regular basis, and calculate their carbon footprint. The goal is to identify their diet (its source of origin – where was it grown, packaged, shipped from, etc.), its impact on their subjective well-being (also known as "happiness"), and its impact on their health as well as climate justice. Students conduct research to identify one potentially problematic ingredient that they frequently ingest. The idea here is for the students to investigate their carbon footprint and reflect on their current dietary choices, and also consider food ingredient(s) that might be detrimental to their well-being, such as increasing the vulnerability to certain diseases such as COVID-19, cancer, diabetes, etc. The goal is to widen students' awareness and encourage them to make up their own minds about their dietary choices while considering new directions to take. Furthermore, with the encouragement of a TED Talk on the power of talking about climate change with others, students are asked to create/design an infographic to effectively engage with the larger community on the issues of climate change and climate justice, and then use the infographic to talk to friends and family about what you are learning about climate change and climate justice.

This exercise is designed to present the realistic problems of forecasting weather. Lake effect snows are hard to forecast because they depend on information that isn't part of the regular set of information and involve some pretty specific things that integrate the location of the site with surrounding environment. Even places close by can get totally different forecasts. When you have a regional forecast, it doesn't really address lake effect snows, unless the forecaster really focuses. So the exercise aims to show the value of broad critical thinking in meteorology, and it is very dramatic, because the difference between 36 inches and whiteout and clear blue sky is undeniable. The exercise comes when students are 8 weeks into the class. The class is an AMS based class, which has already been described well in this workshop by Julie Snow from Slippery Rock. Our class is given in the fall semester and lake effect snow starts in October and is quite an issue in forecasts until April. The skills of a forecaster are tested, and you cannot use forecasts from nearby areas reliably. Finally, we live in a fantastic snow belt, so lake effect snow happens a lot. In a good year we get over 300 inches of snow, mostly at times that places nearby do not. You can drive to Houghton in the bright sun and be met by a wall of very active blizzard just a few miles out of town.

There are some excellent tutorials available from COMET, and outreach of the National Weather Service. I use one done by Greg Byrd, which is available online or in a power point format. There are a number of things that must be learned before forecasting. These include some fluid dynamics of plumes, latent heat, remote sensing, upper air mapping, and the use of models. We cannot cover all them completely. I try to introduce all these things and give people entry points into the juicy parts of these topics, but do not expect students to understand completely. One thing you can spend a long time on are the satellite images. Here is one, just to whet your interest: http://serc.carleton.edu/details/images/13586.html

I have the students make a list of the critical parameters they think might be needed for a successful lake effect forecast. This is a challenge to prepare, but the idea is to include things that are even marginally useful and to collect data to see what is most important. We get a list of parameters like this:


850 mb wind direction
850 mb temperature
Lake Superior surface temperature
fetch length
opposing bay?
Inversion layer height
topographic lift factor
wind shear evidence
upstream lake
upstream moisture factor
snow/ice cover issues


This list is pretty good, but deliberately not complete, and we encourage students to add other things they think might be important. The next step is to find where you can get this information. I have web data sources for most (see below), and some of them are interrelated. You can do this exercise for any site around Lake Superior or probably many other lakes as well. For specific sites, the fetch length, upstream lake and opposing bay information are obtainable directly from the wind direction if you have a good map (Google Earth). So a spreadsheet for parameters related to wind direction can be prepared in advance and these parameters can be immediately available from the wind direction. Nonetheless the issue of sources for all this stuff must be addressed in an effort that spans several hours. The use of models is needed to look into the future where possible.

Once students know what they are looking for and how to find it, the exercise starts its data collection. Every day or every 6 or 12 hours beginning when conditions get close to "LES favorable" students collect information on these LES predictors. They also make LES forecasts for each period and include that information in the spreadsheet. The next day the real snowfall data is added to the spreadsheet, and this can be used as validation data for the forecast. This data collection needs to be done for several weeks (November and December in my case, usually a good time for LES).

The data analysis is the most challenging part. Spreadsheet plots which test the sensitivity of various parameters singly and together are possible. There is a lot of sophistication possible if there is enough LES to analyze. Overall, results should be a good experience with imperfect data addressed to a real-time problem. Models and real data, remote sensing, and balloons are all integrated and there are quite obvious weaknesses.

On the final day of class student groups will compete by doing forecasting which employs the LES techniques. This might reflect the most recent snow event. A more important element of this submission will be their evaluation of LES prediction parameters. Not only do we consider the actual forecast, but we discuss which parameters were successful? Which are inconclusive? What suggestions for improved forecasts are possible from the experience? The format of this will be short presentations with time for discussion.

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The activity should begin with a brief review of scale, maps, how to use a grid in sketching, and the importance of field notes in science. Students are provided with a dead animal (roadkill) and some means of determining scale (meter sticks laid next to the animal). They sketch the animal, locating and labeling the major bones and bone groups. Students answer a series of questions designed to help them notice taphonomic features of the carcass. They are challenged to come up with the series of steps from death to burial to fossilization for the animal.

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Students begin this activity by using the IPCC4, carbon diagram to distinguish natural and anthropogenic carbon. (A point that students may need to have clarified is that CO2 from natural and anthropogenic sources is the same molecule.). Students begin with Activity 1 , calculating the overall carbon transfer for a year, followed by an examination of the role of forests in the carbon cycle. This suite of activities includes 7 parts, and the selection of additional activities depends upon the discretion of the instructor and focus of the class.

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Students work in groups to study some aspect of formation and/or preservation of raindrop imprints. They start by generating a list of variables that might affect formation or preservation of this sedimentary structure. Using this list, they propose testable hypotheses and then focus their study on one hypothesis. They collect materials needed to carry out their study and then do it. They need to document what they did and how they did it. The groups present their study to the class orally and in writing.

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Before we go into the field, students are exposed to field collection techniques and appropriate information to collect at the outcrop. This assignment is good for field trips because students each collect 1 or few samples, but spend time on the outcrop measuring a section and collecting associated lithologic and other fossil data if available (locality information, exposure, over and underlying sedimentology, details of host rock, sedimentary structures, assocaited fossils, diversity and abundance, taphonomic condition of fossils, etc). The field locality can be anywhere where there are resaonably well preserved fossils (and should give students an appreciation of museum quality specimens). This allows this exercise to be flexible as field trip localities change. All of the information that they collect in the field will be included in their field notebook that is handed in at the end of the field trip for evaluation. In the lab-I used class time-students are asked to make a detailed sketch of their sample that they can take to the library with them, and a discussion is held as to where to look for information to identify specimens with. Students are given a week (variable depending on the availability of resources, for example if monographs need to be aquired through inter-library loan) to idenitfy their specimen and then asked to catalog them for the museum. They fill out a SUNY Oswego Paleontology Museum card, which they have seen all semester for their sample and are given the option to donate it to the collection or keep it.

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This activity asks students to identify examples of types of fossils amongst the exhibits at the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York. Students will build on their understanding of the history of life, paleontology, taphonomy, ichnology, and paleoecology--especially reefs.

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Students attend a class fieldtrip where over five locations across Tennessee representing three different geological time periods (Ordovician, Devonian, and Cretaceous) are visited. The students are required to collect 20 different taxa (5 of which must be unique to each student) and then using the knowledge they have gained in labs identify their taxa to species level. They must make a powerpoint presentation summarizing the paleocological and paleoclimatological information gained about each locality through the collection of the fossil taxa. The activity helps familiarize students with the geology of Tennessee and field collection of fossils in addition to lab identification of fossils.

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Students pick, sort, box, and identify fossils (mostly mollusks but also bryozoa, arthropods, cnidaria, and annelids) from richly fossiliferous, clastic marine sediment, compile a faunal list,compare the fauna with modern taxa, and make evaluate a paleogeographic model for the taxa found.

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This activity is an invertebrate fossil review in the format of Jeopardy to provide a fun opportunity for students to prepare for their fossil practical.

Students describe an unknown vertebrate fossil (or fossils, if multiple specimens are necessary for identification). This exercise is the culmination of their lab studies in the morphology of the vertebrate skeleton and requires them to integrate their ability to describe the morphology with research into the literature on their assigned animal. Students also become familiar with presentation of research through writing a formal scientific paper in the style of a particular journal.