This page from the Volcano World website contains a summary account of the 1959 eruption at Kilauea Iki which is illustrated by photographs and videos.

An exercise on the effects of flooding that took place in the upper Mississippi River drainage basin in 1993, using before and after satellite images.

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Analyze the effect of a 1996 controlled flood on a sandbar in Grand Canyon. This exercise uses Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst.

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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 multi-part activity, students study seismograms from 3 different seismic stations recording the magnitude 9.0 Sumatra earthquake of December 26th, 2004. By comparing the arrival times of the P and S waves on each seismogram, students determine the distance from the epicenter to each station. Using that data, they can accurately map the location of the epicenter and the precise time of the earthquake. After locating the epicenter, students calculate the position of the tsunami generated by the quake at one hour intervals. From those determinations, predictions are made about how much time people had before the tsunami crashed onto their shores. Finally, students investigate some of the ways people can lessen the impact of the next great tsunami.

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This activity uses data collected from DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis) stations in the Pacific following the 2011 tsunami generated off the coast of Japan. Students are required to map the wave front after 5, 10, and 15 hours to better understand the speed and propagation of the tsunami wave.

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This exercise uses the example of the March 28, 2014 M5.1 La Habra earthquake to teach about earthquake risk and resilience in southern California. Students will examine seismic waveforms recording during the earthquake, as well as read reports from scientific agencies and news outlets to answer basic questions regarding earthquake risk and resilience.

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Play-Doh model of a geologic map

Provenance: Carol Ormand Ph.D., Carleton College
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.
Students analyze a geologic map of an angular unconformity that truncates a pair of dikes, with some topography. When students have deciphered the map and constructed a cross-section, I show them a Play-Doh model of the geology and ask them to compare it to their mental model of the area.

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Using cameras mounted to drones, students will design and construct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform in a process called structure from motion (SfM). This activity has both a hands-on component (collecting data with the drone) and a computer-based component (creating the 3-dimensional model).___________________Drones can take photos that can be analyzed later. By planning ahead to have enough overlap between photos, you take those individual photos and make a 3-dimensional image!In this activity, you guide the students to identify an outcrop or landform to study later or over repeat visits. They go through the process to plan, conduct, and analyze an investigation to help answer their science question.The Challenge: Design and conduct an experiment to take enough photos to make a 3-dimensional image of an outcrop or landform, then analyze the image and interpret the resulting 3-d image.For instance they might wish to study a hillside that has been changed from a previous forest fire. How is the hillside starting to shift after rainstorms or snows? Monitoring an area over many months can lead to discoveries about how the erosional processes happen and also provide homeowners, park rangers, planners, and others valuable information to take action to stabilize areas to prevent landslides.

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This exercise should be used after you think students know what AFM diagrams are and how they work. This is sort of a quiz -- to see if they can properly interpret the diagrams. There is no point moving on to real projects that involve AFM diagrams if the students don't understand the basics.

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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 is a computer-based activity in which students retrieve data from websites maintained by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Weather Service (NWS), and then use that data to test different hypotheses regarding streamflow and precipitation. Students import data from web sites into a spreadsheet program where they can construct scatter plots and perform simple statistical tests. The activity has two components, the first focusing on relations between streamflow and drainage basin characteristics (drainage area, slope, precipitation), the second focusing on trends in annual precipitation at two locations in the USA: Burlington, VT, and Boulder, CO. As part of the second component, students conduct a statistical test to determine if the long-term trends in precipitation are significant.

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This jigsaw style exercise challenges new geomorphology students to collect topographic data and analyze its accuracy and precision.

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In this field-based exercise, students were given a tour of an abandoned mine site and asked to utilize a set of field measurements to describe the spatial details of metal transport. This drew on previous experience with field measurements and prompted them to work together to solve an observed chemical evolution of a contaminated brook. The exercise is an excellent example for students to bring together acid-base chemistry, redox chemistry, and thermodynamic concepts together to describe a reasonably complex system. The field component was completed in a full day, but we will be expanding this next fall for a 2 day exercise (weekend). The exercise was coupled with subsequent labs to complete analysis of the water samples and accomplish speciation calculations using PHREEQCI.

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Intended Audience: This activity was used for an introductory Geochemistry class, which contained students from sophomore level to master's students. We took the trip in mid-October, about as late as possible in Vermont, after they had gained some previous field experience and lab work in addition to an in introduction to these principles in class.

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Cluster of questions on acid rain deposition.

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Students research the acidification of freshwater streams and lakes, identify at least one of the sources, and determine how their daily activities contribute to the problem.

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Using the article "Stop Raising Awareness Already" by Cristiano and Neimand and a six-step template, students create a plan to show how they apply the knowledge learned throughout the term to make a broader impact. The students are asked to very narrowly choose a single action they want a group of stakeholders to take and develop a multiple-step plan to accomplish the action. The students are required to select and justify a targeted stakeholder, develop an action, identify a messenger that can influence their targeted stakeholder to take the action, develop a sticky message relating the "ask" to the goal of the campaign, and document their key assumptions imbedded in their action plan.

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This assignment is a 10-hour, out-of-class project where each student
designs and carries out an action plan to enhance sustainability.
Students select from a large suite of alternative actions, most of which
can be quantified for reductions in CO2 and energy consumption, as well
as in dollar savings.

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