Field trip handout (Microsoft Word 52kB Oct27 10)

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In this activity, students explore the relationship between developmental biology and macroevolution by focusing on how evolutionary changes in ontogeny can produce small-scale (within species) and large-scale (between species or major lineages) evolution of morphology.

In Part A, students begin the activity by measuring skull length vs. braincase width in an ontogenetic sequence of an "ancestral" wolf species. They graph the resulting data then determine whether the relationship between the two is isometric or allometric.

In part B, they choose three skulls of adult domestic dog breeds (available via online sources such as Skulls Unlimited). Measure the same two variables and compare these "descendent" data to the wolf "ancestral" data. In this way, they determine which dog breeds (e.g., pugs, bulldogs) appear to be paedomorphic and which (e.g., greyhounds) appear to be peramorphic.

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This case study places students in professional roles in organizations dealing with resource issues where they perform typical tasks. Whereas background content is provided via the Web, activities are done on paper. This case consists of three modules completed in successive lab sessions, focusing on gold mining in South Africa and its economic, political and social ramifications.
geology: Student groups, representing gold mining companies, are given company directives, topographic maps and sample analysis reporting forms. The directives instruct them to assess their map regions for gold deposits. Groups report on the results of a geochemical survey they conducted to identify potential gold deposits.
economics: Groups are given new company directives and geologic maps of the area previously studied. They perform an economic assessment of the gold deposit(s) in their area and recommend whether the company should proceed to production. Groups design and implement an exploratory drilling program, i.e. select drilling sites, methods and depth, and give the map to their instructor for coring. They are provided corresponding cores which they use to select stratigraphic intervals for geochemical analysis. Using deposit grade, volume and recovery factor, students calculate the market value of the deposit's recoverable gold. Comparing this value to projected production costs, groups recommend whether their company should proceed to production.
social: Groups are assigned new unique roles, e.g. mining company, miner's union, worker's rights NGO, to investigate the social consequences of mining, i.e., the role of mining technology on safety, job security and environmental impact.. In this scenario, the mining company is considering new technologies to offset the increasing cost of deeper mining. Based on their perspective, groups identify externalized costs; evaluate potential impacts on their group and establish a starting position for negotiations between stakeholders. The various groups then negotiate an agreement about which technology(ies) to adopt.

We use these Google Earth Exercises (GEE) in the undergraduate structural geology course. Students construct a complete geologic map of each 'field area' outside of class; in class, the students display their map and discuss their observations, interpretations, assumptions, and reasoning. This exercise promotes discussion among the students, and also provides students with the opportunity to develop speaking skills, as well as 'on-your feet' reasoning and analysis. Mapping can be done digitally using graphic software such as Adobe IllustratorTM or using hard copy images and overhead transparencies. (Digital mapping requires that the students have knowledge of working with, and access, to a graphics program such as Adobe IllustratorTM). Students also draw stratigraphic columns and cross-sections as needed; and they determine a relative sequence of events for each 'field' area. Cross section lines are included in the .kmz (Google Earth) file (not on the map images). This allows the instructor to move cross-section locations as needed. We have 3-4 students display and discuss maps for each exercise (usually takes about 30-45 min.); we encourage student to question their classmates; with time, our encouragement becomes less necessary. We have students construct geologic maps on transparencies and display the maps via an overhear projector keeping the LCD projector free to run Google Earth. Students can use Google Earth (flying to specific locations, or zooming in and out, or viewing specific locations from different perspectives) during their presentation to illustrate or support their interpretation, and logic path that lead to that interpretation to the class. This provides the opportunity for students to see how different people interpret the same area; they also learn that although each maps is different, each map tells a similar story; that is first-order relationships emerge from the family of maps constructed by their fellow classmates. After each discussion, all of the students display their maps on a side table in the classroom, providing the students with the opportunity to compare all of the maps of the same area. As a result they clearly see that all maps are different, yet each can be valid, and they also see how others handled both geologic relations, and, at a more basic level, clarity and neatness in presentation. As the semester progresses we see a sharp increase in the quality of the maps, both geologically and in terms of clarity and neatness, likely a direct result of students both viewing their classmates maps, and having their maps viewed by classmates. Peer pressure can be a wonderful learning tool.

Each exercise focuses on a different area. An individual exercise or any combination of exercises maybe used at the instructor's discretion to compliment topics in either lecture or lab. The exercises, as presented, are ordered in such a way that they take the student progressively from relatively straightforward map areas to increasing complicated map areas. We begin the geologic mapping sequence using a Venus mapping exercise available on the SERC site http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/structure04/activities/3875.html in order to get the students to feel comfortable identifying and delineating patterns; we develop concepts about material units versus structural elements (and in some cases primary verses secondary structures; please see the Venus exercise for the range of students goals, which we do not repeat here). The first Google Earth Exercise, (GEE1) follows the SERC exercise 'Visualizing Inclined Contacts' by Barbara Tewksbury http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/structure/visualizing_inclined.html . Our GEE1 exercise is included below with all credit to Barbara Tewksbury. Subsequent exercises (GEE2, GEE3, etc.) include: faults and topographic interactions; folds and topographic interactions; faults and crosscutting dikes; refolded folds. These exercises may be used in any order and/or positioning within a course. We find that both the repetition of GEE exercises, and the progression of increasing complexity of the exercises, allow the students the opportunity to develop their individual skill sets. Although mapping can be completed by the students during, or outside of class time, we find that having the students do this outside class allows each student the opportunity to move at their own pace, which seems important for our students and their learning. Discussion during class time is a critical part of the learning process.

These exercises can be easily replicated for your favorite field area or an area your think exemplifies an instructive structural style. We encourage other educators to apply this idea to other areas and submit the new Google Earth Exercises to SERC as well.

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In this activity, students use Google Earth Pro to examine and measure sedimentary and geomorphic structures related to the late Pleistocene draining of glacial Lake Missoula and Lake Bonneville.

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To prepare for this activity, students have been introduced in class and through readings in their textbook to basic crustal deformation processes and landforms including: kinds of stress and strain, surface expressions, and types of faults and folds. Students also have some previous experience navigating in and controlling views in Google Earth. In Lab, students use their personal or lab computers equipped with Google Earth to view a number of specific locations within the United States that have folded or faulted landforms. Each location and landform includes some additional background information and a series of questions that ask the student to 1) review learned knowledge of processes and landforms, 2) identify real topographic expressions of processes and landforms, thus practicing the terminology, and 3) create new understanding of the processes that formed specific landforms. This exercise helps students to move from viewing simple textbook diagrams of crustal deformation processes and landforms to recognizing these elements in real landscape settings.

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In this assignment, students use Google Earth to investigate a variety of fluvial and glacial features. Firstly, they simply have to find an example of both a meandering and braided river and cut-and-paste the image into their assignment. They also need to trace the path of the river to see where it ends. Next, they are given three latitude/longitude coordinates and are asked to determine the river type, channel width, floodplain width, gradient, etc. In the last part, they are given the latitude/longitude coordinates of two valleys. They use the terrain & tilt features of Google Earth to determine whether the valley is V- or U-shaped. They then decide what sort of processes is responsible for the valley's shape.

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This activity from a Geomorphology course is designed to familiiarize students with using Google Earth, as well as making the connection between features they see in a map or satellite view vs. what they might see from ground level. Students will use this exercise as the first of several where they will evaluate landforms and the materials and processes responsible for their development.

This exercise takes advantage of student's interest in Google Earth to teach some basic concepts about meandering rivers. Students prepare for class by reading about lowland rivers and/or hearing a lecture on them. They bring their own laptops to class or share with a partner or I take the entire class to the computer lab next door. In class they work through the worksheet and use Google Earth to take quantitative measurements of the rivers. They look at historic migration of meander bends and quantify river sinuousity, wavelength, amplitude, and radius of curvature of meander bends. They explore meandering bedrock rivers in Taiwan as a cool thought exercise in how that can happen. They end with looking at images from an area that they will have a field trip to during their next lab period. To keep people from flying through the exercise and getting bored, we do the whole activity in think-pair-share style. Students work on a location, answer the questions, and then we discuss it as a class.

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This activity focuses on one of the many free web mapping applications available: Google My Maps. Google My Maps allows you to create personalized maps, complete with linked photographs and YouTube videos. However, Google My Maps also includes a series of tools for simple quantitative analysis, for example to find the latitude and longitude of a location or the length and area of a geographic feature (e.g. a stream or a glacier).

Students examine a geologic map of the Grand Canyon and two imaginary vertical cores through canyon stratigraphy. They use these data to construct a cross-section across the canyon and to answer questions about the geology of the Grand Canyon.

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Brief analysis of the geologic setting of the Grand Strand (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and vicinity) coast and the limited occurrence of sand suitable for beach re-nourishment. Students use a USGS Fact Sheet to examine the beach, near offshore, and edge of Coastal Plain geology.

The Tour Stops are arranged in a teaching sequence, starting with continental rifting and incipient ocean basin formation in East Africa and the Red Sea and ending with the oldest surviving fragments of oceanic crust. Transforms and fracture zones are introduced, also abandoned basins, convergent boundaries, and marginal basins. Instructors can easily change the sequence of stops to suit their courses using the Google Earth desktop app or by editing the KML file.

In the age of publicly funded space exploration involving several national space agencies, knowing about the highest mountain in the solar system is as basic to geospatial literacy as knowing about the highest mountain on Earth is to classical geography. This activity is a Google Earth grand tour of the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, the Moon, and Mars) and guides students to explore atmospheres, magnetospheres, landscapes, and interiors. Each tour commences with an astronaut's overview from space, and then it zooms in on specific, media-rich placemarks, and ends with a concluding view from space. This is intended to help students develop a sense of relative position and relative size of features on other planets.

This is a lab/project in which the students not only name and identify a suite of granitic rocks but try to piece together the tectonic and geologic history of the Idaho batholith. This activity brings together the process of naming rocks, determining the I-, S- and A-type nature of the rocks, estimating magma source and potential assimilants, a nonquantitative depth of intrusion for the suites, and any distinctive textures that might help tell the story of the batholith. It forces students to move outside the rock in a box lab for granites and create a regional geologic history.

I find this project to work well in class for a number of reasons. Group work and counting on your classmates to interpret the rocks is a foundation of the entire project. The students get exposed to more rocks than in a typical lab without having to identify each of the in great detail since they are ultimately only responsible for their own suite. I have removed at least one lecture on granites and replaced it with this project for them to do the interpretation themselves rather than just passively absorb the geology.

The students have just a basic introduction to I-, A- and S-type granites and the models for the generation of these magmas. They have already learned about grain size relating to cooling rate and depth of intrusion, but it usually is awhile since they thought about these concepts.

Obviously this project depends on the exact samples being available, but the theory of the project can be applied to numerous geologic settings.

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To prepare for this project, students develop hands-on research skills throughout the course of the semester. A variety of class activities emphasize how to pose research questions, develop hypotheses, determine materials and methods, and understand how fossil data are used to answer a variety of research questions. Class discussions of primary literature emphasize how to track down, synthesize, and evaluate primary literature. Case studies presented in lecture illustrate how to tackle research questions in paleontology. For this project, students apply all of these skills to tackle a topic they find interesting in paleontology. Intermediate deadlines are established to help students develop a research question, write up a rough draft, and revise it in detail. Student progress is also tracked via updates to their peers in the classroom. The written grant proposals must range in length from between 10-12 pages (NOT including the references cited or figures and tables sections) and are double-spaced, 12 pt font, with 1" margins. The rough drafts of the proposals are worth 5% and the final versions are worth 15% of the students' total grade.

Students are sent an Excel file containing the depths of various types of datums from DSDP and ODP cores: biostratigraphic, oxygen isotope, and paleomagnetic datums.

They are then asked to plot datums from different cores (and settings) and evaluate the stratigraphic completeness of the cores based on the behavior of the datums.

After plotting the datums, they are asked a number of questions about stratigraphic completeness, reliability of datums, etc.

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This is a graphic correlation lab exercise. It uses real data from a peer-reviewed journal publication by Lucy Edwards (1989). (I have manipulated the data set a little bit.) Students can finish the activity in two hours or less.

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Students are given major-element, whole-rock chemical analyses from ten samples of lava from the 1868 eruption of Mauna Loa. They do not know sequence of eruption, only that the lavas came from the same volcano. Students are asked to evaluate the hypothesis that the observed chemical variation is due to the fractional crystallization of olivine. The hypothesis can be tested any of a number of graphs. Several examples are given in the accompanying Excel workbook.

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Student graphing of high and low tide from locations showing the three tide types (diurnal, semi-diurnal, and mixed) and the Bay of Fundy (tidal amplitude increased by resonance). Students recognize that not all tides are the same and that location is an important control on tides.

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