Students prepare for this two session lab by reading a lengthy peer-reviewed article (Schmoll et al, 1999) about the Geomorphology of Anchorage. No coaching is provided for this reading assignment, but students have experience reading and discussing such articles from earlier in the course and are expected to write a brief overview of the article (with outstanding questions) prior to class. Major concepts important for understanding the article have already been covered in lecture and/or lab: glacial geology, Quaternary climate, isostasy, and southern Alaska tectonics. In the first (indoor) lab session, students (many of whom are from out of state and are thus not intimately familiar even with the street layout of Anchorage, let alone its geomorphology) are guided by the instructor through an orientation to the Anchorage landscape, relating mapped cultural elements on a street map to topographic features visible on topographic maps and a hillshaded LIDAR map. They are then broken into small groups, each of which is assigned responsibility for identifying and interpreting landscape features associated with a particular section of the Schmoll article (e.g., LGM moraines or coseismic landslides). Mylar overlays allow each group to map the features directly over blown up (poster-size) sections of the LIDAR map. Each group then concludes the first lab section by presenting their results to the larger group with an explanation of pertinent processes and time relations. Each group is then assigned responsibility for preparing for a field presentation for the next week's field trip. Over the next week, small groups, on their own time, locate and visit sites in the field, refine their understanding of the processes that generated these sites through a meeting with the instructor, and coordinate with other small groups to structure a half-day field trip. In addition to presenting their results orally during the trip, each small group prepares a field trip guide for the larger group.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Has minimal/no quantitative component

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In this lab we take a brief field trip to Adena Brook, a first order tributary of the Olentangy River in central Ohio. We observe the stream, its setting, its bedrock, determine some stream velocity profiles, and measure some basic chemical and physical properties of the stream water.

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