Exploring California's Plate Motion and Deformation with GPS | Lessons on Plate Tectonics part of Geodesy:Activities
Students analyze data to study the motion of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. From GPS data, students detect relative motion between the plates in the San Andreas fault zone--with and without earthquakes. To get to that discovery, they use physical models to understand the architecture of GPS, from satellites to sensitive stations on the ground. They learn to interpret time series data collected by stations (in the spreading regime of Iceland), to cast data as horizontal north-south and east-west vectors, and to add those vectors head-to-tail.Students then apply their skills and understanding to data in the context of the strike-slip fault zone of a transform plate boundary. They interpret time series plots from an earthquake in Parkfield, CA to calculate the resulting slip on the fault and (optionally) the earthquake's magnitude.

Surface Process Hazards part of Surface Process Hazards
Worldwide mass wasting causes hundreds if not thousands of deaths per year and billions of dollars in damages. Many of these losses would be preventable if societies prioritized landslide mitigation. In this 2-3 ...

Future of Food part of Future of Food
The Future of Food is an introductory-level science course that emphasizes the challenges facing food systems in the 21st century, including issues of sustainability, resilience, and adaptive capacity, and the ...

Measuring the Earth with GPS: Plate Motion and Changing Ice-Water part of Measuring the Earth with GPS
Although GPS's first widespread use by geoscientists was to track plate motions, geoscientists have found that GPS can also be used to measure local movement due to changes in the amount of water, snow, and ...

Lead in the Environment part of Lead in the Environment
The Lead in the Environment module is designed to integrate multiple disciplines to inform solutions to the ongoing burden of childhood lead poisoning. This module addresses the systems dynamics of lead within the ...

Modeling Earth Systems part of Modeling Earth Systems
In this course, we develop the qualitative and quantitative tools for constructing, experimenting with, and interpreting dynamic models of different components of the Earth system. The integrated set of ten modules ...

High Precision Positioning with Static and Kinematic GPS part of High Precision Positioning with Static and Kinematic GPS
Part of GETSI Field Collection: In this module, students will learn the fundamentals of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS, a more universal term than GPS) and how to apply these techniques beyond answering, ...

Activity 10: Feedback Loops Applied part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Students apply the vocabulary and concepts from the Activity 9: Feedback Loop Introduction to assess and create earth science feedback loops with the LOOPY online modeling program. (Optional) The students then ...

Activity 9: Feedback Loops Introduction part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Students are introduced to feedback loop vocabulary and experiment with different relationships between reservoirs in simple feedback loops using LOOPY, a free, online modeling program.

Activity 8: Equilibrium Experiment part of Teach the Earth:Teaching Activities
Students explore the systems thinking concepts of equilibrium and nonequilibrium with a water pouring experiment. Students complete the activity at home or virtually with videos. Water is poured from a top ...