This is a problem-based learning (PBL) group jigsaw activity. The scenario is:
Students are employees of a unit of the United Nations responsible for coordinating disaster relief after a major disaster (the 2004 Asian Earthquake and Tsunami) occurs. The agency needs to understand the situation in each country so that it can coordinate the work of various governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in the affected area.

Students are divided into Expert Groups (related to academic specialties such as Economics, Medicine, Political Science, Earth Science, etc.) and spend several days researching their topics. Students are then reassigned to one of seven or eight Country Groups, based on the countries most affected by the disaster. Each country group needs someone representing each expert group. In the scenario, these groups correspond to task forces that must determine what the situation is in each country and try to assess the current need for international assistance.

Students research their country, using internet resources, especially the CIA World Factbook and ReliefWeb, the information coordination website of the United Nations. At a large-group roundtable discussion, each group presents what it has found about its assigned country. As a final product, each student writes an individual report summarizing findings and making recommendations for disaster assistance.

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Students are employees of a unit of the United Nations responsible for coordinating disaster relief after a major disaster (the 2004 Asian Earthquake and Tsunami) occurs. The agency needs to understand the situation in each country so that it can coordinate the work of various governments and NGO (nongovernmental organizations) working in the affected area.

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In this activity, students work with paleoclimate proxy data (d18O, CH4, CO2)from the Byrd and GISP2 ice cores to investigate millennial-scale climate changes during the Last Glacial/Deglacial time periods. Students must prepare a publication quality plot of the data and answer several questions about the similarities and differences between the time-series (north-south phasing, amplitude, symmetry) and use this information to assess the bipolar see-saw mechanism for abrupt climate changes. Students are encouraged to read two journal articles for more information and to synthesize their results with other information from lectures and earlier readings.

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This activity is a Google Slide playlist that will introduce students to microbes that can be found in deep sea sediments, and what roles they play in their environment. This playlist is suitable for use in remote or in-person instruction and can easily be added to a Learning Management System.

Provenance: Molly Ludwick, Kings Mountain Middle School
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

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This assignment teaches geochemistry students to explain the mathematical forms of rate laws, and organize paragraphs in their writing assignments properly.

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Annotations are short and cannot give detailed information, but they should cover these points:
1. The general contents of the work. What does it discuss and how detailed is it? This is the main portion of the annotation.
2. The author's qualifications. Is the writer a trained scholar? A journalist? Someone relating a personal experience?
3. An evaluation of the reliability. Is the information given reliable? Are facts or opinions stressed?
4. The intended audience. Is it for a general reader or a specialist? How much, if any, background knowledge is needed to understand it? Was is easy or difficult to read?

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Well Field Practice: aquifer characterization through conducting and interpreting of aquifer pump tests.

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In this laboratory exercise students will have an opportunity to examine the crystal structures, optical properties and health hazards of the common asbestos minerals. The laboratory will reinforce optical microscopic skills that students have learned in mineralogy and show them how mineralogy can be critical to understanding a current public policy issue.

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This project helps familiarize students with data commonly available from well drillers, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. Such data is often used to produce consulting reports. In this exercise, students practice working with available data and writing a consulting report while working on a real project of local interest. The question involves the probability of success in drilling a large well for a new county park. Students are given various maps and are guided through the use of a statewide database that contains well logs and well data. The outcome is a written report that describes the location and general geology of the site, uses the available data to summarize the types of materials that a driller might encounter, answers the questions that the client is interested in, and identifies problems or advantages presented by the groundwater system as indicated by available data.

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This baseflow recession exercise will help students build skills in analyzing time series data in a spreadsheet. It should also open their eyes to the variation in streamflow, both at a single location over a year, and between locations across the US. Data have been gathered from 6 locations across the US. Each student is tasked with characterizing streamflow decline (baseflow recession) after precipitation events.

Index terms: hydrology, streamflow, baseflow recession

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Participants learn what to do before, during, and after a potentially damaging earthquake. They brainstorm valuable components for an emergency supplies backpack and then present on their ideas. The primary resource is the booklet Are you prepared for the next big EARTHQUAKE in Alaska?

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X-ray diffraction is a quick and valuable tool for identifying minerals. Minerals are an integral portion of our everyday life, in addition to composing our planet! They help bring electricity into our homes and remove our bathtub rings. In this lab, students analyze the X-ray diffraction patterns of three household cleansers, Ajax, White Magic, and Soft Scrub, in order to identify the abrasive minerals in each.

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The purpose of this resource is to measure and classify the plant life at a Land Cover Site to help determine the MUC classification.

The purpose of this resource is to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of a classification system. Students sort birds into three possible classes based on each bird's beak: carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Students compare their answers with a given set of validation data.

Each student selects a popular science book on a geoscience topic of interest to them, finds two book reviews of that book, and writes a book review that includes some description of the book as well as some commentary and review. Each student also gives a short (three-four minute) oral presentation of their review to their classmates (either stand-alone or with one Powerpoint slide).

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Lab 1: the students begin by describing on a worksheet their own ideas
of delta formation using concept sketches and written descriptions of
the stages of formation, with only broad guidance from the instructor.
They are also asked to describe the key features of their concept
sketches, and to hypothesize how those features might develop (the
processes). The students have all been exposed to deltas in Physical
Geology, but likely only have rudimentary knowledge of them. Once they
have completed the worksheet, the entire class moves to a lab with a
stream table in it, preset to run a "model delta." The model has both a
web cam and a time-lapse web cam set up over the table to record the
development. The students help start the water flowing and the cameras
recording, then watch as it develops over the next 2-3 days.

Lab 2: In the second lab, we use grain-size analysis of the
stream-table delta as a means of testing some of their ideas from lab
1. The students as a class develop a strategy to sample the
stream-table delta for grain size, using a laser grain-size analyzer.
Each pair of students collect one sample, but are also asked to predict
the changes in grain size distribution for samples elsewhere in the
delta. The particle size analyzer rapidly provides results to the
students near the end of lab.

Lab 3: the final lab is a field trip to a pair of gravel pits that
expose the guts of two natural stranded deltas, including topset and
foreset beds. The students are asked to assess the landforms on a topo
map before arriving, and to describe the deposits at each site we
visit. On the final writeup, the students need to synthesize all the
elements of the three labs, along with input from our readings in the
textbook (Easterbrook) and McPhee's "Control of Nature."Â

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Building Oscillation Seismic Simulation, or BOSS, is an opportunity for learners to explore the phenomenon of resonance for different building heights while performing a scientific experiment that employs mathematical skills. They experience how structures behave dynamically during an earthquake.

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Students build a stratigraphic column for a pre-selected area through the compilation of a series of individual research projects. Students are required to conduct introductory field research as well as a literature search to become "experts" on a selected stratigraphic unit. In addition to a final report, students will present their information at an outcrop on an end-of-semester field trip.

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Students conduct a greenhouse gas emission inventory for their college or university. Students analyze findings and present information to the college or university community.

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Link the college or university operations with local ecology. In this study, students use a tool from urban ecology, the nitrogen budget, to research the inputs, outputs and subsytem transfers of nitrogen on the college or university campus.

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